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The initial premise of the article appears flawed. Based on my reading of the community response to Horvath's post and Github's response, most people were in th

by akerl_ 13y ago

The initial premise of the article appears flawed. Based on my reading of the community response to Horvath's post and Github's response, most people were in the camp that the founder's wife's actions were outright ridiculous, the coworker's actions (reverting her commits) were asinine, but that the article did not appear to portray sexism, because her only provided example of sexism was ~"some women were hulahooping, I saw some guys gawking at them, the guys thought it was ok". If she had a case for more pervasive sexism at GitHub, I'd like her to lay it out in the open so we can address it. There's a minority of the community who are assholes and will always be assholes. Without becoming a censorship society we can't outright extinguish their ability to make noise. But the vast majority of responses I saw were sympathetic to Horvath's position, if not her sexism angle.

pron 13y ago
> If she had a case for more pervasive sexism at GitHub, I'd like her to lay it out in the open so we can address it. She did. Yet it seems like every effort is made not to address it, including flagging of two articles on HN today, both incidentally or not by women, so that they wouldn't make it to the front page (one did, briefly)[1], [2]. > But the vast majority of responses I saw were sympathetic to Horvath's position, if not her sexism angle. That's right. Many of the comments of HN were disappointingly sexist. Just to give you an example of how cleverly sexism can be masked (even, and especially, if it's unintentional masking of unintentional sexism), the very same people who were quick to assign blame in the NSA/Snowden story, or the Aaron Swartz story, all of a sudden called for restraint until further "data" is obtained in this case so they could form an "informed" opinion, while views supporting and expounding on the sexism claims were dismissed as "emotional". Actually this masking of sexism is so banal, that it is, in fact, anything but clever. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7416189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7416189 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7418029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7418029
- chc 13y ago
  I'm sympathetic to the problems women face in this industry, but the fact that HN did not leap to unwarranted conclusions in this case is something that should be encouraged, not shamed. Maybe people were able to show restraint in this case because they felt less close to the issue due to sexist tendencies, but the modicum of restraint shown is not itself sexism — it's what should be the ideal across the board. Also, neither of those articles are by Horvath and they barely even go into her accusation of sexism, so I'm not sure how they're supposed to illustrate that she did elaborate on her accusation. Are you sure you linked the right ones?
  - pron 13y ago
    > the fact that HN did not leap to unwarranted conclusions in this case is something that should be encouraged, not shamed Well, that it did so using the most banal chauvinistic terms makes it kind of shameful. > but the modicum of restraint shown is not itself sexism — it's what should be the ideal across the board. Yes, but the fact that restraint is shown only when women and sexism are involved is in itself sexist (actually, this is not quite true; I seem to recall similar calls to restraint of judgement back when Uber's employees picketed the company). > I'm not sure how they're supposed to illustrate that she did elaborate on her accusation They're not. Her accusations of systemic sexism are clearly laid out at the top of the original TechCrunch story, but have been largely ignored in the discussion. The flagging of those two stories is just another example of the commendable (yet strangely exceptional) restraint HN is showing today :) ... aaaand this very article just mysteriously dropped off the front page. Another fine example of admirable (albeit selective) restraint.
    - chc 13y ago
      I just reread the article to be sure I hadn't glossed over it, and I personally do not see any clear account of sexism. She says it was there, and I believe her (because sexism at a tech startup is about as surprising as ants at a picnic), but she doesn't clearly describe it at all. None of the specific grievances she cites have any clear connection to her gender. PS: Sorry people are hating so much on your reply. I do appreciate your overall point.
      - pron 13y ago
        This isn't rape, you know. Sexism isn't an event. It's an atmosphere. She describes the atmosphere. Short of providing hours of videos or recordings, I'm not sure how much more clear she could have put it. Of course, if she had, those would have been generally dismissed as aberrations, or, more likely, as her "misunderstanding" the situation, or "natural in a competitive environment". But that's not surprising either, because the HN community is sexist, and those are textbook responses to allegations of sexism.
- hueving 13y ago
  Perhaps rather than whining about how 'banal' everyone here was, you could just educate us as to what the specific sexism was? All of the stories that were popular here were primarily about a crazy wife harassing an employee and a jealous employee behaving chilishly.
- kens 13y ago
  Regarding the claim that article [1] was flagged off the front page: It currently has 78 upvotes and 101 comments. As I have explained before‡, articles that have more comments than upvotes and more than 40 comments are automatically penalized by the controversy filter. Thus, it is likely that the article dropped off the front page due to the ranking algorithm, not due to a deliberate effort to suppress the article. ‡ http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...
  - pron 13y ago
    I'm aware of the algorithm. But that story, like the other one, did drop off the front page due to deliberate flagging. Most of the comments came later because the item was shared outside HN (I know because I was closely following it). One of the flaggers was brave and honest enough to own up to it, tried to explain himself, and then was open minded enough or civil enough to be convinced. It reached around #8 on the front page with about 60 votes and no more than 30 comments, and then, poof, was gone in a few seconds.

by akerl_ 13y ago

pron 13y ago

> If she had a case for more pervasive sexism at GitHub, I'd like her to lay it out in the open so we can address it. She did. Yet it seems like every effort is made not to address it, including flagging of two articles on HN today, both incidentally or not by women, so that they wouldn't make it to the front page (one did, briefly)[1], [2]. > But the vast majority of responses I saw were sympathetic to Horvath's position, if not her sexism angle. That's right. Many of the comments of HN were disappointingly sexist. Just to give you an example of how cleverly sexism can be masked (even, and especially, if it's unintentional masking of unintentional sexism), the very same people who were quick to assign blame in the NSA/Snowden story, or the Aaron Swartz story, all of a sudden called for restraint until further "data" is obtained in this case so they could form an "informed" opinion, while views supporting and expounding on the sexism claims were dismissed as "emotional". Actually this masking of sexism is so banal, that it is, in fact, anything but clever. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7416189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7416189 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7418029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7418029

chc 13y ago
I'm sympathetic to the problems women face in this industry, but the fact that HN did not leap to unwarranted conclusions in this case is something that should be encouraged, not shamed. Maybe people were able to show restraint in this case because they felt less close to the issue due to sexist tendencies, but the modicum of restraint shown is not itself sexism — it's what should be the ideal across the board. Also, neither of those articles are by Horvath and they barely even go into her accusation of sexism, so I'm not sure how they're supposed to illustrate that she did elaborate on her accusation. Are you sure you linked the right ones?
- pron 13y ago
  > the fact that HN did not leap to unwarranted conclusions in this case is something that should be encouraged, not shamed Well, that it did so using the most banal chauvinistic terms makes it kind of shameful. > but the modicum of restraint shown is not itself sexism — it's what should be the ideal across the board. Yes, but the fact that restraint is shown only when women and sexism are involved is in itself sexist (actually, this is not quite true; I seem to recall similar calls to restraint of judgement back when Uber's employees picketed the company). > I'm not sure how they're supposed to illustrate that she did elaborate on her accusation They're not. Her accusations of systemic sexism are clearly laid out at the top of the original TechCrunch story, but have been largely ignored in the discussion. The flagging of those two stories is just another example of the commendable (yet strangely exceptional) restraint HN is showing today :) ... aaaand this very article just mysteriously dropped off the front page. Another fine example of admirable (albeit selective) restraint.
  - chc 13y ago
    I just reread the article to be sure I hadn't glossed over it, and I personally do not see any clear account of sexism. She says it was there, and I believe her (because sexism at a tech startup is about as surprising as ants at a picnic), but she doesn't clearly describe it at all. None of the specific grievances she cites have any clear connection to her gender. PS: Sorry people are hating so much on your reply. I do appreciate your overall point.
    - pron 13y ago
      This isn't rape, you know. Sexism isn't an event. It's an atmosphere. She describes the atmosphere. Short of providing hours of videos or recordings, I'm not sure how much more clear she could have put it. Of course, if she had, those would have been generally dismissed as aberrations, or, more likely, as her "misunderstanding" the situation, or "natural in a competitive environment". But that's not surprising either, because the HN community is sexist, and those are textbook responses to allegations of sexism.
hueving 13y ago
Perhaps rather than whining about how 'banal' everyone here was, you could just educate us as to what the specific sexism was? All of the stories that were popular here were primarily about a crazy wife harassing an employee and a jealous employee behaving chilishly.
kens 13y ago
Regarding the claim that article [1] was flagged off the front page: It currently has 78 upvotes and 101 comments. As I have explained before‡, articles that have more comments than upvotes and more than 40 comments are automatically penalized by the controversy filter. Thus, it is likely that the article dropped off the front page due to the ranking algorithm, not due to a deliberate effort to suppress the article. ‡ http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...
- pron 13y ago
  I'm aware of the algorithm. But that story, like the other one, did drop off the front page due to deliberate flagging. Most of the comments came later because the item was shared outside HN (I know because I was closely following it). One of the flaggers was brave and honest enough to own up to it, tried to explain himself, and then was open minded enough or civil enough to be convinced. It reached around #8 on the front page with about 60 votes and no more than 30 comments, and then, poof, was gone in a few seconds.