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Now, in practice, I work on diversity because I care about basic fairness. Get down from the ivory tower please. Where do you get off saying that he doesn't b

Now, in practice, I work on diversity because I care about basic fairness. Get down from the ivory tower please. Where do you get off saying that he doesn't believe in fairness? In fact, the original commenter could be seen as being more fair by simply stating that gender shouldn't matter. At the same time, you're looking at one statistic. The race or religion of project contributors could be looked at, but they aren't because IT IS NOT IMPORTANT. Just to counter any downvotes, when I say it isn't important, I mean the gender debate, not women in general. For some reason, this topic has been rehashed so many times on HN and each time someone tries to look at the argument from a gender-less perspective, people like you -- jacobian -- jump out from the bushes to make statements, charging dissenters with misogyny. Projects can maintain fairness without specifically targeting a demographic, they need only be open to everyone and never turn someone down simply because of an attribute they cannot change [gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, height, etc].

bct 14y ago
> they need only be open to everyone The word "only" makes this sentence completely wrong. In startup terms it's like saying that to make a successful product you need only make something useful and put up a web page offering it for sale. It would be great if it was that simple!
- typicalrunt 14y ago
  This kind of reply is the shit people are lamenting about as a decline in the HN comments. If you cherry-pick sentences out of context, then of course you can make a valid point and invalidate mine. To show context, my entire sentence was: Projects can maintain fairness without specifically targeting a demographic, they need only be open to everyone and never turn someone down simply because of an attribute they cannot change [gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, height, etc]. So by "only" being open to everyone, I assert that projects can maintain fairness. How is this incorrect? I never said the project would be successful, you falsely added that using your metaphor. Is there some other magic bullet for making a project fair? Do we need to inject some discrimination and close-mindedness into it?
  - bct 14y ago
    I never said anything about success. We don't need to inject discrimination and close-mindedness, but we do need to counteract it. That means we can't just passively "be open".
jacobian 14y ago
> [...] charging dissenters with misogyny. Where, exactly, did I do that?
king_jester 14y ago
> In fact, the original commenter could be seen as being more fair by simply stating that gender shouldn't matter. We don't live in a vacuum, so even if we feel that gender shouldn't matter it already does in fundamental ways. > At the same time, you're looking at one statistic. The race or religion of project contributors could be looked at, but they aren't because IT IS NOT IMPORTANT. Actually this is really important. If projects are systematically excluding people of certain races or religions, we have a discrimination problem. > For some reason, this topic has been rehashed so many times on HN and each time someone tries to look at the argument from a gender-less perspective, people like you -- jacobian -- jump out from the bushes to make statements, charging dissenters with misogyny. Nobody called anyone a misogynist in this discussion. > Projects can maintain fairness without specifically targeting a demographic, they need only be open to everyone and never turn someone down simply because of an attribute they cannot change [gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, height, etc]. This is absolutely true. However, why there aren't more women in tech isn't just about project maintainers. Women in general are not going into or are finding spaces in which they can participate as developers and programmers. This is the whole point of this particular RailsBridge workshop.
- typicalrunt 14y ago
  All valid points. I appreciate the response. This is a minor nitpick, but I'll bite. I realize nobody explicitly called anyone a mysogynist, but neither did I. There is a difference between saying someone is mysogynist the adjective and mysogyny the noun. jacobian inferred that because the OP doesn't care about diversity then he doesn't care about fairness. That is tantamount to charging someone with sexual discrimination, also known as mysogyny. [Edit: I upvoted king_jester because, regardless of whether I agree with him on all points, his reply was concise, helpful and he wasn't being a dick]
  - jacobian 14y ago
    > jacobian inferred that because the OP doesn't care about diversity then he doesn't care about fairness. That is tantamount to charging someone with sexual discrimination, also known as mysogyny. Really it's not. There's a big difference between active discrimination and just not caring. I said that my guess is that icedancer doesn't see lack of diversity as a moral problem, not that s/he is a engaging in discrimination. Accusing me of "jumping out of the bushes" to "attack dissenters" is really unfair. Look, I appreciate that some people don't see lack gender diversity as a problem. I disagree, but I'm never going to convince those people to see the issue in my terms. I hope you'll re-read my comment and try to assume just a tiny bit of good faith on my part.

bct 14y ago

> they need only be open to everyone The word "only" makes this sentence completely wrong. In startup terms it's like saying that to make a successful product you need only make something useful and put up a web page offering it for sale. It would be great if it was that simple!

typicalrunt 14y ago
This kind of reply is the shit people are lamenting about as a decline in the HN comments. If you cherry-pick sentences out of context, then of course you can make a valid point and invalidate mine. To show context, my entire sentence was: Projects can maintain fairness without specifically targeting a demographic, they need only be open to everyone and never turn someone down simply because of an attribute they cannot change [gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, height, etc]. So by "only" being open to everyone, I assert that projects can maintain fairness. How is this incorrect? I never said the project would be successful, you falsely added that using your metaphor. Is there some other magic bullet for making a project fair? Do we need to inject some discrimination and close-mindedness into it?
- bct 14y ago
  I never said anything about success. We don't need to inject discrimination and close-mindedness, but we do need to counteract it. That means we can't just passively "be open".

jacobian 14y ago

> [...] charging dissenters with misogyny. Where, exactly, did I do that?

king_jester 14y ago

> In fact, the original commenter could be seen as being more fair by simply stating that gender shouldn't matter. We don't live in a vacuum, so even if we feel that gender shouldn't matter it already does in fundamental ways. > At the same time, you're looking at one statistic. The race or religion of project contributors could be looked at, but they aren't because IT IS NOT IMPORTANT. Actually this is really important. If projects are systematically excluding people of certain races or religions, we have a discrimination problem. > For some reason, this topic has been rehashed so many times on HN and each time someone tries to look at the argument from a gender-less perspective, people like you -- jacobian -- jump out from the bushes to make statements, charging dissenters with misogyny. Nobody called anyone a misogynist in this discussion. > Projects can maintain fairness without specifically targeting a demographic, they need only be open to everyone and never turn someone down simply because of an attribute they cannot change [gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, height, etc]. This is absolutely true. However, why there aren't more women in tech isn't just about project maintainers. Women in general are not going into or are finding spaces in which they can participate as developers and programmers. This is the whole point of this particular RailsBridge workshop.

typicalrunt 14y ago
All valid points. I appreciate the response. This is a minor nitpick, but I'll bite. I realize nobody explicitly called anyone a mysogynist, but neither did I. There is a difference between saying someone is mysogynist the adjective and mysogyny the noun. jacobian inferred that because the OP doesn't care about diversity then he doesn't care about fairness. That is tantamount to charging someone with sexual discrimination, also known as mysogyny. [Edit: I upvoted king_jester because, regardless of whether I agree with him on all points, his reply was concise, helpful and he wasn't being a dick]
- jacobian 14y ago
  > jacobian inferred that because the OP doesn't care about diversity then he doesn't care about fairness. That is tantamount to charging someone with sexual discrimination, also known as mysogyny. Really it's not. There's a big difference between active discrimination and just not caring. I said that my guess is that icedancer doesn't see lack of diversity as a moral problem, not that s/he is a engaging in discrimination. Accusing me of "jumping out of the bushes" to "attack dissenters" is really unfair. Look, I appreciate that some people don't see lack gender diversity as a problem. I disagree, but I'm never going to convince those people to see the issue in my terms. I hope you'll re-read my comment and try to assume just a tiny bit of good faith on my part.