11 ms·
Poll: Male or female or other
2 years since last poll. Lets see where we are at now? Previous polls:
https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22Poll%3A+Male%22
EDIT: Added a 3rd new option "Other" on public demand.
- speeder 14y agolink for last pool?
- codegeek 14y agoUpdated in post.
- Mz 14y agoCan you also leave the clickable linky? I am on an Android and can't copy-paste. Thanks.
- codegeek 14y agoOk. I added a clickable in comments.
- ars 14y agoYou can copy/paste on android. Press and hold on the text, then use the pointer boxes to adjust the area you want to copy, then stare at the incomprehensible icons and guess which one means copy (why can't they just use words?)
- Mz 14y agoI can copy-paste some things but not others and it is frequently a huge pain in the arse. Fortunately, codegeek did me the curtesy of adding a clickable link already. So it doesn't really matter. But thanks.
- Mz 14y agoAnd I am still interested in hearing from you if you are female. (Edit) Previous (closed) thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5074151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5074151 I guess you can post here or shoot me an email (my gmail starts with talithamichele). Thanks.
- fakeer 14y agoHis profile connects to a blog of some "Yash Chandra". The name suggests he is a Hindu male. Most probably an Indian or a PIO.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoWhy is this relevant? Sure, his comment might sound a bit creepy to the wrong ears, but stating he is an Indian male is pointless, we shouldn't be judging him by either factor. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding you and codegeek's reply is correct.
- Mz 14y agoI suspect it is a misinterpretation of my remark. These are not the droids you are looking for. Move along. No need to argue about a stray misunderstanding. ;-)
- fakeer 14y agoI saw a question, which I found nothing wrong about, and I answered it because I could. BTW, I am also an Indian and a male. Neither did I see anybody judge someone, except - now, you maybe. [edit: I just realised I told him/her the gender of a different guy. He/she wanted gender of OP some other post :-) ]
- codegeek 14y agoI think Mz was referring to "you" as in anyone and not specifically me.
- haimez 14y agoObligatory comment about response bias. Glad we've gotten that out of the way.
- md224 14y agoAssuming you mean non-response bias, how would that figure into this poll? Do you think men or women would be more likely to vote? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-response_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-response_bias
- anxx 14y agocreated an account just to vote! update: yes, female here! and long time hn reader, like years.
- Mz 14y agoI am going to guess you are female. Yes? No?
- haimez 14y agoI don't think it's very relevant, but it was going to show up and I was hoping to dismiss the notion preemptively. Look at this quagmire you've started!
- beyondavatars 14y agoI'd rather be considered a person in engineering rather than a woman in engineering, but I'm still interested in the stats.
- kgodey 14y agoMe too.
- jesss 14y agocould not agree more.
- takotaco 14y agoWhy would you not want to be considered a woman in engineering if you actually are one? As a female in Computer Science I am legitimately curious.
- UnoriginalGuy 14y agoMaybe she just wants to be respected as an equal rather than being respected for being a female/trailblazer/different/etc.
- kgodey 14y agoIn my case, it's because my gender is not important to my identity and the constant harping about "women in tech" means that people pay way too much attention to my gender. I'm just another person!
- takotaco 14y agoRight. I understand this. I wouldn't want to be singled out or considered "special" or "different" simply for being a woman who happens to also program. At the same time I do have a very strong gender identity so I wouldn't be comfortable at all if I felt like I had to downplay or hide my gender to fit in. So while I do consider being a woman extremely important to my identity, it has nothing to do with me also being interested in tech and computer science.
- niggler 14y ago(obligatory comment regarding the fact that gender isn't necessarily a dichotomy) How about both (hermaphrodites) or neither?
- publicfig 14y agoJust a note, "hermaphrodite" is a wildly inaccurate term to define those with an indeterminate sex within the dichotomy of male/female and can be quite offensive as well, especially when used outside of specific cases (none of which I've ever heard to be identified accurately as strictly hermaphroditic)
- niggler 14y agoHermaphroditism is incredibly rare, but there are recorded cases (including cases of births involving hermaphrodites: according to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18394621 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18394621 there were 11 reported cases of fertility in true hermaphrodites)
- ctdonath 14y agoThe POCT-1A data protocol includes six possible values for "gender".
- niggler 14y agomy duckduckgo-fu is failing me: could you enumerate the possible values?
- itsybitsycoder 14y ago"Hermaphrodite" isn't a gender.
- rpncreator 14y agoThis assumes the presence of gender binary. This assumes a person fits into one of those identities, which is not always the case.
- codegeek 14y agoI thought about adding a 3rd option but don't want to start a controversial post/poll. EDIT: Added it on public demand.
- Mz 14y agoYou already did (start a controversy). If you can add "other", I suggest you do so. It will reduce some of the fallout.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- publicfig 14y agoToo late!
- cllns 14y agoSeems like it's too late for that. You should just add another option and ignore the haters. (edit: thanks)
- j45 14y agoNot sure if it would be a big deal. Some things are bug deals if treated as one. Transgender has been a long existing thing, the awareness of our particular civilization might not be high.
- fnordfnordfnord 14y ago>Transgender has been a long existing thing, the awareness of our particular civilization might not be high. Now I'm curious about the fraction of "other"
- deleted 14y ago
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago195:13 (now 195:14) at the time of writing. I can't say I'm surprised, but that's more than 13x. I didn't know it was that bad.
- pmelendez 14y ago16x now
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- yaddayadda 14y ago1061:(64:27) at the time of writing. 11.6x
- codegeek 14y agoPrevious polls clickable: https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22Poll%3A+Male%22 https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22Poll%3A...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- johnpowell 14y agoYou are the problem.
- galvanist 14y agoI think that you are interpreting a sarcastic comment literally. The linked article condemns the ridiculous device in question. Unless of course I'm double-reverse mis-interpreting your comment...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- kintamanimatt 14y agoI didn't realize how much of a sausage fest this site really is. It's amazing how much intellectual talent we're missing out on because it seems tech scares away women. I'd actually be curious to see what kind of sexual orientation distribution there is also. I wonder if it'd fall in line with the general population. Created: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5520651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5520651 (Edit: Not sure why this poll has been killed. It was created as a serious poll to satisfy my curiosity, not as backlash! It was actually yielding some really interesting information, in particular the higher proportion of non-straight people than is normal in the general population.) (Edit again: now been unbanned!)
- Tichy 14y agoWhat if I told you that I find the term sausage fest offensive and it makes me feel unwelcome in this community?
- kintamanimatt 14y agoHow so?
- schallis 14y agoThe phrase is a little crude but I see no reason for it to cause offence to any particular gender more than another.
- VLM 14y agoPossibly Tichy is a vegan. Another hostile meme environment: "icanhazcheezburger"
- icebraining 14y agoWell, the type of sausage wasn't specified; I hear soy-based vegetarian sausages aren't all that bad.
- fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
- flipside 14y agobinary? really? There are other answers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender Edit: Thanks for adding other.
- shmerl 14y agoDo robots qualify as "other"?
- jlgreco 14y agoThey presumably could. I'd say a car construction robot is ungendered but, as a fictional example, Bender from Futurama is male gendered. Ungendered would be "other" I would say.
- Paul_S 14y agoHe's not asking about gender, he's asking about sex. I don't know why he's getting so much flack for it.
- FUlibs 14y agoThere is no such thing as gender. It's something liberals made up.
- dwb 14y ago(trying to resist the troll, but..) Just because you don't feel something, doesn't mean you can dismiss the mindset of others. Many people feel and demonstrate that gender is separate from sex and can be very much non-binary. It surely exists, whether you like it or not.
- FUlibs 14y agoSo if I feel like something is true, it magically becomes true? Cool. I sure do feel like a millionaire. poof Whoa, my bank account balance... it's true! Thanks, stranger. Want some of my new money?
- booop 14y agoWow, 700 votes in just 40 minutes. Looks like this is HN's favorite topic.
- jurassic 14y agoFemale here and longtime lurker before registering somewhat recently. The only time I feel very cognizant of the gender imbalance is in comments of articles about the lack of women in tech. Some amount of introspection on how to be welcoming to everyone is good, but the constant drumbeat of articles on the "woman question" definitely increases my feelings of "otherness". These pieces and the comments that follow are often addressed toward men as if there are no women present.
- lutusp 14y ago> These pieces and the comments that follow are often addressed toward men as if there are no women present. Or perhaps they're comments that the writer believes are gender-neutral, so the gender of the reader isn't an issue? This is obviously not always true, but it might be in some cases that are misread as being male comments directed toward other men. > Some amount of introspection on how to be welcoming to everyone is good, but the constant drumbeat of articles on the "woman question" definitely increases my feelings of "otherness". The "woman question" wording isn't really the most common phrasing, and it certainly sounds exclusionary. In all such exchanges, there are some encouraging facts: 1. Mathematics doesn't care about your gender. 2. Code doesn't care about your gender. 3. A properly run code project doesn't care about your gender, only whether you can code. Expressed another way, the basics of code development are gender-neutral, and where people are involved, a certain amount of direct experience will persuade most people that your results are worth supporting. As to being excluded in a more social sense, the best way to defeat that is not to care about it. It's basic human psychology that not caring about acceptance will make the other group members wonder why you don't care, which naturally enough and quickly makes you an insider.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoThis makes me wonder how many females here are cisgender. Myself, I'm transgender. I reckon there's probably a far higher proportion than average, since some transwomen have opposite-gendered childhoods, and hence were in an environment where being in tech would be acceptable, perhaps. I'm not saying it's a problem if there are a lot of trans women here, it's just it would be highlighting a problem if there aren't a lot of cis women here in comparison, because that would mean tech was scaring women away and the only ones who were here are the ones who had been unfortunate enough to have had male childhoods. (I'm worried this will come off as horribly bigoted or something, I don't know, I hope people can see what I'm getting at)
- FUlibs 14y agoSo you're a guy who likes dressing up like a girl. Ok, acceptable. Now stop lying and calling yourself a girl. You're not. Edit: Fuck you downvoters. Yes, I know it's socially unacceptable to question someone's "identity". I don't care. That identity is a lie. He's a woman because he likes women's clothing just like I'm black because I love me some fried chicken.
- Fargren 14y agoGender and sex are two different things. If she identifies with the female gender, well then she has every right to be called a girl.
- FUlibs 14y agoGender is made-up. There is only sex.
- darshan 14y agoHuh, after your other hateful comments, I'm surprised that it's almost like you get it, here. If you differentiate between biological sex and gender as social construct (what you call "made-up"), what is your objection to someone having a "made-up" gender identity that is different from the more common gender identity of others born with their same sex?
- Koldark 14y agoDoes it really matter???
- jcromartie 14y agoI try to treat everybody on tech sites as if I don't know their gender, but I certainly assume that they are male.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoIt's ingrained into my subconscious. I automatically refer to people on IRC networks and such with male pronouns, without thinking about it. This is despite being female and sometimes frequenting majority-female channels.
- benaiah 14y agoMostly OT grammar nerd musings: I use male singular pronouns for people whose sex I'm not aware of because English male singular pronouns are actually also its neuter singular pronouns (I believe this is true for several other major languages, as well). Hence, for a noun that has gender, but whose gender is unknown, the correct pronoun is "he", rather than some silly construction such as "he/she" or the at worst flagrantly incorrect, at best vastly confusing singular "they". (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Universal_.22he.22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Universa...) "One" is also a reasonable alternative, though its odd construction means it can't be used as a drop-in replacement, and it can often sound awkward, overly formal, or antiquated. When political correctness became a big deal, people bent over backwards to avoid using "he" as a gender-neutral pronoun, overcorrecting so much that they forgot that "he" isn't necessarily masculine (the universal "he" started losing favor in the 1960s). It was similar to the guy that got fired for saying "niggardly" (a synonym for stingy) because it sounds like "nigger", despite the fact that the similarities are meaningless and entirely coincidental. Depending on how PC the crowd is, I'll sometimes use one of the incorrect constructions to avoid ill-placed ire. Interestingly, Baltimore primary school students have started using "yo" as a neutral third person singular (http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-yo-pronoun.aspx http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-yo-pronoun.aspx - Warning: autoplaying audio ads, and a fullscreen ad that covers the page on load). While I don't like "yo" for purely subjective reasons, it is an interesting linguistic development. EDIT: fixed the spelling of "niggardly". Thanks, jcromartie.
- grandalf 14y agoEver since lobste.rs it's only the brogrammers who are left on HN
- icebraining 14y agoWhy do you feel you're a brogrammer?
- pmelendez 14y agoHonest question: What is exactly the Other option? Don't trans-men and trans-women identify their selves as Male or Female anyway?
- bird_in_hand 14y agoThere are people who identify as genderqueer, who don't fit into any gender identity, and people who identify as a gender, who don't have a gender identity.
- bird_in_hand 14y agoDamn you, auto-correct. That's "agender."
- Fargren 14y agoThere's people who don't identify as any gender. There's also physically interesexual people[1]. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
- lambada 14y agoGender is not binary. Myself, I'm neither male nor female in terms of my identity. To simplify it a bit, When I think of myself in my head I don't think of myself as being "a male" or "a female".
- djcapelis 14y agoGenderqueer and other folks who identify outside the binary often prefer an other option. Trans people who identify as either a woman or man usually answer according to how they identify.
- kation 14y agomy vote isn't counting or changing the number at all, but it would be a +1 to female.
- anxx 14y agowe seem to have stabilized at 7
- tzs 14y agoThere's also a sexual orientation poll going on now [1]. It's been killed [2], so no more comments, but voting still works. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5520651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5520651 [2] I have no idea why
- mdisraeli 14y agoFemale here, although I don't often comment. Used to place a few choice comments as FeministHacker [1], until a desk move at the office cost me access to the account. Oh well, incentive to get blogging more! I've a lot of people who are very much dear to me who identify as non-binary, so I was thrilled to see the great support for the other option. As predictable for trans/cis discussions, a real jerk emerged from the woodwork, but the general support is great too! Regarding the general topic of LGBT+ people (now that the other poll has been killed), if you're a queer hacker in the UK, feel free to get in touch! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=FeministHacker https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=FeministHacker
- p6v53as 14y agoSeems like gender ratio is not changing over time. But, to my surprise, there are actually more females than I expected.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tokenadult 14y agoBy the way, we will have no idea what the actual ratio is here on Hacker News even after many more poll responses are recorded. (Another comment already in the thread points out that some respondents are voting more than once.) That's the defect of voluntary response polls. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5482013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5482013 for a recent posting of a FAQ on the subject. I have no doubt that there are more male than female participants here, and no idea what the actual ratio is. (Most online communities I participate in, including my circle of Facebook friends, have a strong female majority. That's because many of those online communities pertain to education policy, and mothers care more about that issue than fathers, on average, at least as to online participation in discussion of policy.)
- joshguthrie 14y agoResults are overwhelming, a 12:1 ratio for males:females and a 40:1 ratio for male:other. At first, I was afraid to answer this poll truthfully because of the recent "gender issues" our scene has faced. But reading through the comments...yes, we (as always) dwelved into the "gender stuff" again but all involved parties managed to have a decent and civilized discussion. Which made me realize: what our community really needs to improve isn't "red cards", "women-only events", "enforced talks parity" or any other stuff that's just dividing us further. What our community needs is civilized discussion.