That's sad and not without a touch of irony precisely because in stifling the discussion we're probably doing more harm than good.

Fully agree that stifling / censoring is causing a lot more harm than good (as is apparent by a lot of the reactions here)

For those interested in learning more about privilege, read these two essays by John Scalzi, Being Poor (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/) and Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th...).

Try to read them without being reflexive or poking holes in them. If you find yourself getting riled up or defensive stop and ask yourself why you're feeling the need to respond that way.

You claim that people at HN experience privilege, and in some sense I agree most of us do. And yet as proponent of a progressive agenda, you also have a different kind of privilege. Most normal people will automatically identify you with the "right" side. You will never have to fear being labelled a racist, sexist or anti-Semite. For example, why is it that you automatically turn to very patronizing language when addressing people you consider insufficiently educated in their privilege? Could it be that you are used to having your sense of moral superiority go unchallenged?

I don't know what you want to achieve by posting the first one, since I have never seen anyone with any good arguments who argues that being poor is not a significant disadvantage when it comes to things like social mobility. HN seems to lean more to the idea that structural/systemic issues on a societal scale does matter and hinder individuals, as opposed to the thought that an individual can forge his own way and make himself into whatever she wants to be no matter the circumstances, which is another school of thought.

I was hoping the second one would give some arguments for how being a straight white male (emphasize male since being white is pretty obviously an advantage all things considering) is a ridiculous advantage. But then it turned out to just start with the initial assertion, explain it with an RPG analogy and then ... return to the initial assertion. But it's all so clear to me now that I can relate things like leveling up and playing through a game on maxed attributes to my own sex... not.

By the way, is the difficulty the same for white geeky males?

So, why did you feel the need to respond as you did? If that's your response, it seems to me like you should really grapple with the challenges they present before jumping in here to comment. As someone who grew up very poor, it makes me chuckle that you can't see the connection. They're deeply, profoundly related. Some of my other comments on this thread might make it more clear how — I don't want to retype them here.

If you find this comment grating, well, let me translate it into geek-speak: before jumping in to comment, please Read The Fine Manual. :)

Yes, I know you set up that preemptive shield against dissent. Or preemptive shield against dissent that seems reactionary, or angry, or something of a similarly negative emotive kind. I felt the need to respond because I found it objectionable.

> If that's your response, it seems to me like you should really grapple with the challenges they present before jumping in here to comment.

Challenges. Let's see..

As for the first article, as I've already said, I already knew (in an intellectual sense) that being poor is a disadvantage. So yeah, not as if my worldview was shattered there, or that I shake my fist against the skies over not having a harder lot so that I could brag about having overcome it later or something else that might make want to not be from the middle class for some reason. What challenge? I already agreed...

As for the other one, well it didn't really challenge any of my beliefs about gender (in)equality since it actually doesn't give any arguments, anecdotes or data. It's an assertion. With an analogy. If anything I'm mad because of how thoroughly unchallenged I was, and how I don't know anything more about how it might be a woman (which I am not, surprise). If I want to know how it might be to be a woman (or not be a man with my specific attributes), I want to read about other peoples experiences, not a fucking video game metaphor. How is that going to enlighten me in any way? But I've found that men in particular are just supposed to sit down and be handed the immutable facts about gender and society (and from a man no less).

> As someone who grew up very poor, it makes me chuckle that you can't see the connection.

I'm in dire need of enlightenment it seems.

> If you find this comment grating, well, let me translate it into geek-speak: before jumping in to comment, please Read The Fine Manual. :)

Honestly not sure what that last reference is. mmm, something-something console game/board game, I think. -1 geek point to me.

> Honestly not sure what that last reference is. mmm, something-something console game/board game, I think. -1 geek point to me.

http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/r/RTFM.html

This is not the point of the essay.

> I'm in dire need of enlightenment it seems.

Heh. Ok, I'm out! :)

Well I've said what I wanted to say about my impressions. If you found my tone too hostile, which I'm guessing why you're saying 'bye', it might be because I found you to be too patronizing, which is just my impression. And from how you've engaged some other people in this thread it seems that you don't simply "bow out" because you're a gentleman that don't want to get tangled up in a messy argument, but because you don't find them to be willing subjects to be educated without protest. So gg I guess.

I wrote what I wrote in my original comment not as a preemptive "defense" — as if I was gearing up for a fight — but as a way to get whoever read those essay to hold back from replying reflexively and actually spend time trying to understand them as the author intended them to be understood.

Likewise, I'd ask you to do the same for my comments. Can you imagine a world in which what I am saying makes sense or would even be the "obvious" thing to believe? Can you imagine several? Are some of them more plausible than others? Why or why not?

I bow out when the conversation starts to feel like the Monty Python "Argument Clinic" sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y&t=1m18s

How many gender-blind software architects were out there through this entire technology boom we've seen in the last 40 years? Just tinkering away at platforms and code and programs, not really thinking about anything other than their craft. Someone will jump in and say that it was their privilege to be able to just focus, unlike X minority trying to do the same, and I'll agree with you there. To think that there's some odorous force emanating from these privileged folks, working to keep others out, strikes me as strange. The "bros" in tech are hardly the ones that built or stand near the entry-gates.

This is dangerous. If people are scared to speak openly and honestly about topics such as racism, homelessness and sexism because they don't want Valleywag to label them as racist, elitist or sexist, we'll all be forced to just go on pretending everything is great.

[1] http://pando.com/2013/12/26/look-whos-gawking-inside-nick-de...

[2] http://valleywag.gawker.com/major-fwd-us-donor-says-a-strong...

I think Paul Graham is a good, interesting person with a lot of interesting and valuable insight that comes from experience I will never have. But he is not infallible, and I think this is a huge blind spot for him.

Valleywag probably wants to see him burned at the stake, then drawn and quartered by four Uber SUVs. Think of the pageviews!

I really think that people secretly enjoy being outraged.

For these feminists, women who fail are obvious evidence of patriarchy, and women who succeed are obviously just working alongside the patriarchy. I firmly believe that if next year the tech industry was 55% female and females received 55% of funding and salaries, feminists would point to that as evidence that the patriarchy is purposefully giving things to women to hide the fact that they're all misogynist pigs. This prominent tech feminism is, according to their own terms, completely unfalsifiable.

"The white privilege that benefits many white women in tech plays a huge role in allowing them to occupy a position denying gender oppression, supporting the patriarchy, and undermining feminist activism."

This "female team" is doing the exact opposite. I think they're safe from the feminist horde.

Also, you might get something from this comic: http://www.harkavagrant.com/?id=341 You seem to be experiencing similar terrors.

The essay isn't calling out women who fit that description. It is attributing those denials to successful women in tech.

Thankyou for putting into coherent thought what I was never able to - a lot of these arguments you hear from the 'leg up for women in tech' crowd are just that - unfalsifiable. They can never be wrong.

Which topics engage people's identity depends on the people, not the topic. For example, a discussion about a battle that included citizens of one or more of the countries involved would probably degenerate into a political argument. But a discussion today about a battle that took place in the Bronze Age probably wouldn't. No one would know what side to be on. So it's not politics that's the source of the trouble, but identity. When people say a discussion has degenerated into a religious war, what they really mean is that it has started to be driven mostly by people's identities.

When that happens, it tends to happen fast, like a core going critical. The threshold for participating goes down to zero, which brings in more people. And they tend to say incendiary things, which draw more and angrier counterarguments."

http://paulgraham.com/identity.html

It is the first time I saw Paul Graham appear on my Facebook. It is not worth reading, the author is just going for clicks by making baseless accusations. Paul also claims he was misquoted and thinks he should start bringing a recorder to interviews.

It is a shame, one of the appeals of reading a Paul Graham interview or his writing was that it was very open, I hope his no doubt hiring a PR filter or being more reserved with his words will not reduce the quality.

Amazing times we live in, isn't it? If this is how the average person finds out who someone like PG is, what hope is there for the world at large?

Please note that had PG been known through standard mass-media channels way earlier, there might have been even a fighting chance that more women (i.e. outsiders) had joined the tech world early on, since this way the news about YC wouldn't spread through what are predominantly male/engineering-graduate-heavy word-of-mouth channels, and we would have avoided this mess in the first place. Yet the press and the world at large is not even interested in the success of something like YC until the YC is big enough to throw rocks at because of some juicy inclusion/exclusion controversy. So what we have is a controversy that, like hundreds of others like it, is nearly "manufactured" by the press itself.

The moment you become big is the moment you become torn apart by the world.

Experts in fields are typically widely unknown by the general public. I first learned of Andre Geim (A Nobel Prize winner in Physics; not my field) from a youtube video about beer and magnets. I don't think that suggests anything dreadful about society.

To repeat, look at engineering circa 1990s -- nearly entirely male-populated field, moderate prestige. Now look at engineering circa 2010s -- slightly more diverse field, significantly higher prestige. If you start with a 90+%-male base and you achieve moderate, growing success via entirely word-of-mouth advertising and by absorbing people from that base, you are setting yourself up for a situation where your organization reflects the base it grew out of (i.e. male engineers). And yet the media is not going to pay attention to you until your field is large and successful enough for spoils to be had from throwing rocks at you, at which point obviously they are going to criticize you for being "exclusionary". So what you have is a nearly entirely media-manufactured controversy. Why didn't the media focus on getting more women into engineering in the 1990s? Because it wasn't a prestigious enough field at the time for organized entryist action to exist.

Why is there a problem with this controversy? Because entryism exists. Entryists are interested in entering any high-prestige field and taking it over for themselves. They are not below taking up social justice banners to accomplish their goals. In fact, the most successful entryists utilize those banners to the highest effect. The whole controversy is pure manufactured evil. This is not about women's rights or social justice. It's about entryism.

It's very mobbish right now. It's really a turn-off.

But I do think it's a fad that will self-correct. Once it goes too far people will lose followers for joining the mob-du-jour and will adjust accordingly.

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/416994260995416064

Since the original article was under a paywall, those links were also killed.

One of my favourite essays.

http://paulgraham.com/say.html

Also, Valleywag is a cesspool. I ponied up for the whole interview at The Information. I'd rather eat a bug than talk about what a Gawker publication has to say.

But Paul Graham has said some things on this issue that I think are dumb. Moreover, I believe he spends a lot of time worrying about the ways things he says are misconstrued. Reputation is potential energy, as he (correctly) likes to say, and I think he's aware of how much energy is tied up in what he says. Knowing that he is speaking carefully on these issues does not make what he is saying easier to take.

It is one thing to suggest that we should correct biases and imbalances as early as we can, because the sooner someone gets started hacking, the sooner they'll be able to bring those skills to bear on the market. Sure, that's true and probably benign.

It is another thing entirely to suggest that special status is conferred on people who started hacking when they were 13, and that it might be "too late" for people who didn't to join the ranks of that elite.

It is one thing to suggest that there are people that have, for whatever reason (nature or nurture) a natural affinity to working with computer programs and technology. True. Benign.

It is another thing to project backwards from that the idea that if women were going to be good at coding, "they would have found it on their own". That's not true. It presumes that the most important factor in determining whether someone's going to be a good coder is that they have the affinity. But you need more than affinity: you need opportunity and support.

A gigantic blind spot men in technology have is that there are two sides to the problem of gender bias. The side of the coin everyone thinks about is prejudice and bias. Men hear about gender imbalance in technology and interrogate their conscience. "Do I think women are inherently less qualified then men? No! I've never made a decision based on that belief!" They're probably even right about that.

The coin has another side: privilege. Privilege is a simple concept. Certain kinds of people "fit the mold". Paul Graham knows what the typical successful startup hacker looks like. So do most people who work at technology companies. If you ask someone in our field at random to visualize an elite startup hacker and then take bets on the attributes of that imaginary person, you would be nuts to bet on anything but "male", "English-speaking", "20-40", and "white or Asian".

25-year-old English-speaking white males have a privilege, whether they like it or not, because they fit into everyone's mold of a startup hacker. They will sometimes be asked stupid, discouraging questions at job interviews. Like, "do you have any children, and, if so, how will you balance the work of taking care of them with the demanding schedule of this job?". Or, "when did you start coding? We're really looking not so much for someone who can execute this role, but rather who lives and breathes technology". You can tell by looking at some people that they "live and breathe technology" (guilty as charged). That's not a privilege at a bar or a White Sox game, but it is a privilege in our industry.

The existence of privilege is not a scarlet letter on young white dudes who code. But the forceful, repeated, insidious denial of the existence of that privilege is a problem: it reinforces the privilege and allows it to feed on itself.

When I was in seventh grade, we were assigned to write a little speech about what we'd do if we were in charge of the school. One of my classmates, Dan, gave a speech about how he'd use computers to more rightly integrate school and home-life. After I was done, I asked, "What about people who don't have computers at home?" He responded with a look of confusion on his face, "What? You mean like poor people or something?"

My family didn't have enough money to afford a computer growing up. I got my first computer in 10th grade: a 486 running Windows 3.1 that my mother's boss was going to simply throw away. Dan's words felt like a slap in the face, even in 7th grade.

If I had read pg's words in 7th grade, they would have felt like a slap in the face, too. Getting my face slapped does not make me or anyone else more interested. It makes people think, "This thing isn't for me."

People in technology, especially men, are utterly blind to privilege. It's astounding. It's also frustrating because explaining privilege to someone who has never seriously experienced the lack of it is like trying to explain to a fish what it's like to breath without water.

Here's another story. I recently mentored a 13-year-old kid through an after-school non-profit. I taught him the basics of programming. He had all the affinity in the world, but it was still hard even with my guidance. Why? There was one laptop shared among all the members of the family — mother, father, 3 brothers, 2 sisters — and he'd only show up to our sessions with the laptop maybe 50% of the time. Any work he'd do between session would often be lost because other people would tinker with it. Everyone around him teased him for playing with computers so much and being so "nerdy" and "gay." Neither of his parents spoke much English — a Spanish translator had to be present when I was having an extended conversation with either.

But obviously my student just didn't want it bad enough.

Blagh.

Yield the floor to those with less structural support when speaking. Encourage people who are ordinarily excluded. NOTICE AND CALL OUT. Use your privileged position to help where you can, and step out of the way when you can't.

It's pretty powerful when a room full of dudebros is silenced by the one guy who says "Uh ... that 'Aunt Tillie' you're designing for is actually damn smart, just hasn't used a computer yet" or "Uh, guys, you're forgetting HALF THE POPULATION". Or "That was sexist, jackass. Don't ever do that again." Or "Maybe we should acknowledge that having people who have families and would like to see them might like to participate here."

Some of these are actual statements of differing values. They are sharp instruments on wall of the bubble of the echo chamber. They're powerful.

And then, when you've women on your team, listen to them. Remember that status isn't conferred as readily on us. "She's just a junior dev" ... well, yeah, and might have been passed for a couple promotions. When you go out for an expensive meal with folks from a funding firm or industry cohorts, remember who might have had to check their bank balance before coming and may have passed. Try to include those voices. Call 'em up. Offer to pay for a meal -- or if you're in a position of company power, fix it structurally by making it not an individual problem.

And look for sources of bias and privilege. Don't just focus on women. Look for all the myriad ways that you can explain how someone ended up in the social heirarchy how they did, and think long and hard about what's fair. It won't feel nice if you came out on top by accident and you'll try to explain it away. Don't.

Even more telling is when you fail: What are the repercussions of failure for you? What might the repercussions for a woman on your team be? Are they different? That's an especially telling place to look, and it explains a lot of why women are paid less: their risks are bigger for the same gains.

Do spend your life checking it. Don't spend your entire life keeping your experiences to yourself: just be aware that your experiences aren't universal nor even prototypical. Don't be the default voice. Just a voice.

The problem is being blind to it and not understanding how it operates in your life and the lives of others. The solution to that problem is being committed to developing a deep sense of empathy.

2) To build empathy. Recognizing privilege allows me to more readily understand those who are not identical to myself and relate to them. In addition to making me (I feel) a better person, this enables me to more easily befriend a diverse set of people.

3) By consciously thinking about privilege as a concept, real toxic social and political structures which can be actively deconstructed become even more evident.

I see people complaining frequently about the use of the word "privilege" as though it's some kind of pejorative being used against them; in general, it's not. Rather, privilege is a way of thinking about the effects of one's background on their social and economic position by identifying taken-for-granted advantages that society has granted them.

Frankly when I first started learning about the concept of privilege it seemed obvious to me: of course those with different backgrounds have different sets of advantages. But thinking about the concepts consciously and with the ability to label them has really helped me to both identify inequalities and combat them where I am able.

If the people using this term didn't want it to be taken as a pejorative, perhaps they could have chosen a less loaded term, that didn't already have a legacy usage with negative connotation.

"Asymmetrically advantage", "special powers" etc. all would be fine. But when you tell someone they're "privileged", it's very hard for the average speaker of English who doesn't have 100+ hrs of reading feminist literature to not be somewhat offended. The vernacular implication of the term is that someone who is privileged "had it easy", or the effort they've put into achieving their position and status is somewhat invalidated because they had "natural advantages".

My observation is that one of the core dysfunctions of discussions about diversity in tech is that people don't properly respect how impossible it is to go from talking about ensembles and populations, to talking about the behaviors of individuals. Those are two entirely different regimes of theory. We might come up with all manner of fancy terms and bodies of theory to talk about systemic cycles of oppression, vicious cycles of privilege, etc. etc. But to use any of that theoretical framework to talk about the motivations or actions of a single individual is certainly fraught with error and presumption.

Physicists recognize that you can't go from a thermodynamical description of an ensemble of atoms to individual particle trajectories without explicitly having a statistical model of the distribution of particles. But people are so quick to jump down each others' throats with accusations and assumptions about "you're blind to X!" and "you're assuming Y!". It's really just kind of sad. Just as "heat" is a bulk property of a body of particles and is pretty much meaningless when talking about a single particle, I think that a concept like "privilege" is meaningful when talking about a particular demographic versus another demographic. But to say that any given individual "is privileged" because of the color of their skin or their parents' tax bracket is assuming too much, and informs nothing. Individual variance within the distribution is just too high. The Asian immigrant kid with the perfect SAT and lawyers for parents might have taken up coding to escape his parents yelling and fighting every night. Is that more or less privilege than the black girl in a middle class suburb with a huge supportive extended family? What does "privilege" even mean when regarded in such individualized context? What are the broad patterns of systemic inequality that is affecting each of these individuals, and how can you possibly demonstrate that they are the dominant (or even significant) factors in the trajectories of these two lives?

Louis CK has lots of good material on this. Here's one about being white: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4f9zR5yzY Here's another about women: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4LkrQCyIz8 Here's a bit he did on Leno that's good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=derzWWYf3-w

Here are a few things worth reading:

    http://brown-betty.livejournal.com/305643.html
    http://nymbp.org/reference/WhitePrivilege.pdf
    http://blog.shrub.com/archives/tekanji/2006-03-08_146
    http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/
    http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/

If you think the way people ("feminists" as you say) talk about privilege is counterproductive, I encourage you to read the above if you haven't and come up with a better way of explaining it! I'd love to read it, myself.

Everyone is privileged in certain ways that make them blind to other types of privilege. Feminists use the word "intersectionality" to describe this state of affairs.

Anyhow, the point (IMO) is to learn how to navigate in the world without unknowingly exercising your privilege to the detriment of others, like an oafish tourist who walks right through the middle of someone's rock garden because they didn't know any better and when they're informed respond with, "It was just a bunch of stupid rocks! What's the big deal?"

If you grok the concept of privilege, great! My experience is that on HN virtually nobody does. tptacek's comment above is the clearest I've ever seen on the subject here.

A week or so ago one of our former Dutch politicians wrote a column about 'the elite' in Holland. This resulted in a highly entertaining but tragic borderline-flamewar between said politician and some well-known Dutch people. Entertaining because it was fascinating to see such 'impactful' people commenting on an internet forum, and tragic because the discussion became about the term 'elite' and the perceived insult by the 'accused' individuals, rather than about the point of the article: pointing out the reality of there being an 'elite' and asking some relatively open questions on what this realization means.

Having a computer at home, he's in a much better position than I was, when I learned programming at 13 by going to a public PC for 3h/week. I also didn't know English, nor did I have any programming classes until many years later.

Later, my first home computer was a BASIC interpreter, and I also couldn't save the programs because it had no storage, so I wrote all the code to paper before shutting it down each time.

I know I'm probably missing a lot of hindrances you haven't described, so I won't judge the situation just from that, but it does make your post weaker, IMHO. Also, why haven't you got him a pen drive yet? ;)

But let's teleport all the people pg or anyone else here would consider "hackers" into your situation at age 13. How many would've kept at it?

I'm also wondering why you left out the most important dimension, IMO, which is social support. Did your friends antagonize you for pursuing this as a child? Were there any other people in your life who understood even the faintest bit of what you were doing?

Anyhow, this isn't battle of the anecdotes, as if one has to win. It's easy to see the way out from the outside; it's another question when you're on the inside. It sounds like you were a precocious and intimidatingly determined child. I'm sure that's served you well in many things! :)

Anyhow, this isn't battle of the anecdotes, as if one has to win.

Sure, and as I said, I agree with your post, it's just that when you're talking about the poor conditions that many kids have, and the you describe one with a home computer and access to programming classes, it takes the strength from your point. I was picturing worse conditions, frankly.

Privilege is a bogus concept, at least in every manner it has been explained to me. Examine the example you provided. If most elite startup hackers are male, English speaking, 20-40, and white or Asian, then a person giving that characterization would be giving a reasonable one based on observation. What does this have to do with "privilege" or "fitting the mold"? And, more importantly, why should I feel guilty or have some additional responsibility simply because I, through no choice of my own other than refraining from suicide and sex reassignment surgery, fit into one of these "privileged" groups? You might as well claim that the winner of a paper rock scissors competition has privilege.

My questions are actually genuine and not rhetorical. I would appreciate responses, or perhaps corrections of my impression of the concept of privilege.

Unfortunately, most people are unaware of the heuristics they are using when performing such a task. LessWrong explains some of these errors in reasoning quite well [1][2]. When generalized to an entire population, these heuristics construct a "privilege" because anyone with characteristics that do not fit the heuristics will be unfairly disqualified.

Privilege is not an active act of oppression. By having privilege, you are not necessarily actively preventing someone from achieving success. However, the fact that someone has a harder time getting a job for no reason other than not satisfying heuristics for innate characteristics places you in a "privileged" position as a result.

[1]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lg/the_affect_heuristic/ [2]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lj/the_halo_effect/

EDIT: It is important to note that there are other sources of privilege. One example is the fact that females have a much higher probability of being victims of sexual assault. As a male, I spend less time worrying about my own safety (in general) - that is a privilege.

You're far more likely to be assaulted, although your assault is less likely to be sexual in nature.

The post is a little long, but I think you would get more benefit out of reading it yourself than you would out of my poor attempts to summarize it.

> One of the greatest things we, as privileged people, can bring to a discussion being held by non-privileged groups is our closed mouths and open ears/minds. When you enter a minority space, you need to realize that this is their soapbox, not yours. Your privilege gives you many other soapboxes that you can take advantage of, so when participating in a discussion held by a non-privileged group or individual your primary goal is to pay attention to what they say about their issues, lives, and oppressions.

What rubbish. My views are worth less because of my privilege. In other words, any time there is a discussion or debate between two people, the person with less privilege is right, or at least has a greater right to express ideas. This idea of intellectual worth-asymmetry seems to always accompany claims regarding privilege, and I'll have nothing of it.

> Well, finding a balance between accepting your privilege and fighting against it is not easy. I still struggle with it on a daily basis. But, one way to start is to listen to and take feedback from non-privileged groups. They are a good judge of how your actions come across to them.

Of course, the best judge of an individual's reaction is that individual. That's a truism. But here we have another clear implication that the reactions of an individual with lower privilege are more proper or more valuable than the reactions of an individual with higher privilege.

> You Can Only Sympathize, Not Empathize...But, no matter how strong the link is, the facts remain that no two oppressions are the same. And it’s you, as the privileged party, who needs to be extra careful about when and how you draw links. While the intent may be to show solidarity, the result is all too often that you come off as defensive, trying to one-up the non-privileged groups and appropriate their oppression. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever try to make connections, but rather that you should think about how the connections you’re drawing will come off to others.

In other words, analogies are generally not allowed in discussions involving a privilege disparity. There goes one effective means of discourse.

> Revisiting “Politically Correct”...Part of engaging in a language of respect and equality is in recognizing the validity of a person’s choice to use language, and “politically correct” terms, even if you may not understand or agree with them.

Surely the irony of appealing to linguistic subjectivity to defend political correctness isn't lost on the author(s).

> The same power dynamics that create privilege have created a hierarchy of prejudice so that discrimination against a privileged group is not the same as discrimination against a non-priivleged group. This is because discrimination against a non-privileged group is backed up with institutionalized power, whereas discrimination against a privileged group is often a singular act and therefore easier to avoid.

Wow, let it never be said that arguments against this type of belief are straw man arguments, unless of course this article is satire. The notion that a male getting raped by a woman can in any way be seen as inherently different or less of an injustice than a woman getting raped by a man is, simply put, appalling.

> Intent Isn’t an Excuse...while malicious intent may add icing to the cake, it does not dictate whether or not an offense has been made. “That wasn’t my intent,” all too often translates into “your reactions to what I did are invalid because I didn’t mean any harm.”...It, in essense, privileges the sayer/doer’s opinion/feelings over that of the non-privileged person or group that they have offended.

And this article repeatedly makes it clear that the non-privileged person's opinions and feelings are more valuable.

> Make an Effort to Learn the Lingo...What’s not fine, however, is telling a non-privileged group that their terms are wrong. You, as the privileged participant, don’t get to define what is and is not appropriate usage in a minority space.

Well there goes linguistic relativity. Now it's clear that any terms used by less privileged people are correct, period.

That's as far as I made it. If there is eventually a reveal that the entire article is satire, then the joke is on me, although I wouldn't be surprised. There some serious Poe's law going on here.

Did you read my responses? I explain why I think each quoted section is ridiculous. Most of the quoted sections are not empirical claims that I am disputing ("my current picture of the world"), but are rather claims about opinions or normative claims which I am disputing.

You see/read/hear something. It doesn't make sense to you. It seems ridiculous. How do you know whether it actually is ridiculous or there's something critical you're not understanding?

Assuming you believe the theory of evolution, consider how fundamentalists think about it. They will say it's "obviously ridiculous" and have a million reasons why. Nevertheless, it's not ridiculous. Rather, there's something (many things) critical they're not understanding.

It "seems" ridiculous because it contradicts their prior understanding of the world. How can you tell when something is actually ridiculous or it's your prior understanding of the world that needs to be changed?

This is a more general and personal question. Feel free to divorce it from the issue of gender and privilege if you like, it's really a question of "personal epistemology."

Second, your probability is bad. You're confusing P(A|B) and P(B|A). This is understandable — lots of people do this all the time without realizing it, myself included.

Third, your understanding of privilege is confused. As a successful, white male who has started living in Silicon Valley, I acknowledge my privilege but do not feel guilty about it. That you've bound up the idea of shame in privilege might explain why you find it hard to understand — not because it makes the idea harder to understand but because your "body" is going to have a hard time swallowing an idea that tells you you're a bad person.

Here's one way to think of privilege. Privilege is the sum total of all the things big and small that you don't have to think about on a day to day basis but other people do.

For example, as an innocent white person being approached by a police officer, I never have to wonder whether this police officer is coming to help me or harass me. Indeed, I might even presume something like, "Oh, the officer must be coming to tell me something useful."

As a male, I never have to worry about getting raped while walking down a city street at night, or plan your evening so that I won't be in that situation.

As someone with means, I never have to think about whether you have enough money to buy food to last a week, or what it feels like to have to made a trade off between food or gas this week. Or the terror of being sick without insurance.

Now, you might know these things. I don't know and I'm not presuming. I don't even know whether you're white, male, or anything else. I'm just trying to paint a picture.

If you want reading, I recommend these two essays by John Scalzi: Being Poor (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/) and Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th...).

If not, my mistake for engaging.

Being a skeptic is orthogonal to having that attitude.

Anyhow, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, ...

I'll just end it here and you can reply however you'd like or not at all. :)

That's very much what baddox is saying, but with less self-deprecation. He/she is continuing to ask questions and indicating that the concept does not make sense to him/her. Asking critical questions about the utility of the concept, etc. are all very well in line with skeptical approaches towards anything.

> My questions are actually genuine and not rhetorical. I would appreciate responses, or perhaps corrections of my impression of the concept of privilege.

Whether or not I was lying then, I am unable to express any more clearly or convincingly that I am willing to learn.

And I believe I have explained what doesn't make sense to me.

    > And I believe I have explained what doesn't make sense 
    > to me.

That said, technology is FAIR. My first interactions with programming were through a throw-away book on IBM BASIC at around age 10. Despite not having the computer access to program for real (much less of a problem today), I wrote many programs before getting my hands a book on a "real" programming language (my apologies and thanks to the author as it was pirated onto a school computer). A few years and an engineering degree later (courtesy of government loans), I have been able to break out moreso than I believe I could have in any other profession.

You see, for those who can understand technology, the barrier of entry is lower than it has ever been. Quite literally, all you need to know to start toward a job is to study any one of the hundreds of free resources available.

I do not believe that the poor must be at the mercy of Lady Serendipity. Despite all the problems, the person willing to expend the energy and (most importantly) learn continually may rise above their earlier standard of living as have I and many others. The issue is the will to take action -- the intent to rise above the status quo no matter what obstacles exist.

Jfarmer, were you ever that poor person? Are you that minority? If not, then the privilege argument indicates that no matter the article, it is impossible for you to understand (and for the record, I believe that anybody can understand if they desire). If so, then you stand with me as proof that there exists a way out. You should also recognize that the victimhood endorsed by the that privilege argument discourages and de-incentivizes people from taking action.

What is the solution to "privilege"? Does being aware of privilege change the way business is conducted? Will an employer suddenly hire an inferior candidate because that candidate is unprivileged? In the reverse, will the employer hire an inferior privileged candidate because that employer wishes to "keep the better candidate from becoming privileged"?

Those persons with money don't continue to make money because they fail to recognize and utilize talent wherever they find it. I've worked with people who complained about working 70+ hours during crunch time because they don't have my perspective (the one with two full-time jobs that aren't behind a keyboard), but that doesn't mean they don't recognize and utilize talent when they see it.

Finally, women (the group of discussion) are decidedly privileged compared to men. A poor woman still works indoors and often has people willing to assist (plus significant government aid). If she becomes the victim of violence, she has places to go. If she has no home, she will be able to find shelter.

In contrast, a poor man works dangerous jobs (I remember stitching up injuries because I couldn't afford going to a doctor) in bad working conditions (93% of workplace deaths are men in the US). He cannot rely on anybody as noone wants to help a man. If he is the victim of violence (76% of homicide victims in the US are men, his only source of "help" is incarceration (According to a major CDC study in 2010, the number of men raped (including those overlooked as "forced to penetrate" where they were raped by a woman, but the system labels it different) was almost equal to the number of women. When you account for all the men who go to prison for non-violent crime and are raped repeatedly for years, the number of male rape victims FAR outweigh female victims).

If he is homeless (80% of homeless are men in the US), he has nobody to go to. Men are discriminated against in school where female teachers grade them lower, penalize them for not acting like the girls in their class. Men drop make most of the failing grades and account for the vast majority of the dropouts. Men are then the minority in going to college and obtaining a degree (at all levels from an associates to a doctorate). It's little wonder that 80% of suicides in the US are men.

While these numbers are skewed away from white males toward minority males, the white males (by percentage and by total count) still vastly outnumber white females (and outnumber females of other races by a smaller margin). I wonder if we shouldn't be asking women (especially the upper-middle class white women who make the majority of such complainers) to "check their privilege".

Perhaps technology doesn't discriminate against women. Perhaps there's a reason why the countries considered the most egalitarian have FEWER women in STEM fields than other countries. Perhaps men having 6.8x more gray matter (while women have 10x more white matter) or mens brains being better at communicating from anterior to posterior (while womens brains are better at communicating laterally across hemispheres) isn't just for show. Perhaps studies showing that male and female children as young as one HOUR old already act different (male children preferring objects and female children preferring faces) shows that the brains of men and women are different. Perhaps there is a biological reason that when given the choice, the jobs that men and women appear to prefer are different.

If indeed there are biological preferences, then men (specifically Paul Graham) are not discriminating against women so much as privileged women are enjoying their freedom to do whatever job they want. Another factor that applies to startups is risk. Women tend to be much more risk-averse than men (it makes sense biologically as risk would not only kill them, but their children as well). If we consider that very few tech people create startups and relatively few women are in the technology fields related to those same startups (there are fewer women in these areas than there are overall women in tech) and we know that these women are far less likely to take such huge risks, then it stands to reason that extremely few women would even ask (with even fewer having marketable ideas). Once again, this is far closer to self-selection than bias.

"Men and women apparently achieve similar IQ results with different brain regions, suggesting that there is no singular underlying neuroanatomical structure to general intelligence and that different types of brain designs may manifest equivalent intellectual performance."

So as always, MUCH more research needed before drawing that conclusion

I supplied information (without sources, but you appear to know google well enough) that there exist differences in human biology and hypothesize that these differences may offer explanation for observations of human behaviour. If a lack of absolutely irrefutable causal data is your only objection, then I suspect that the realm of psychology is not for you as such evidence is practically non-existent in that field.

The bad part is primarily the "arbitrary" bit, as there seems to be bias for characteristics that have nothing to do with personal traits we have control over, like learned skill. The "privilege" is the label for the background that seems to prime a person for easy access to this social group. Without such privilege, a person won't naturally be able to flow into the social group.

I don't think you're supposed to feel guilty, for the same reason lacking privilege shouldn't imply shame. I think it is by definition out of your control. But it can be mitigated over time. So only feel guilt if you help reinforce the imbalance (like commenting on a girl programming, which carries an implication of noteworthiness (since it was noted) and thus perhaps surprise (which could imply by extension social wrongness)). Such complaints may sound small and petty, but if pervasive can easily stack up and amplify into real pressure.

Perhaps this is one reason anonymity is important. The joke "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" can be interpreted to show that there are ways to balance the effect of privilege by just taking it [0]. But in practice, you still need the basics like a computer, which is still outside the monetary ability or gumption for many (like going to a library and programming in 20 minute spurts). Normal levels of dedication wouldn't be enough for such individuals, though it likely is for the group privileged with a background like a white male (which usually has higher resources and better starting conditions). Notably not all who seem privileged are, but that's a similar problem, but in reverse; large flame wars happen when people attempt to qualify which is of a larger magnitude (I have no opinion other than it seems to exist sometimes).

There also seems to be pressure to not appear to be pushing into a privileged group. The individual may be ridiculed for their interest in hacking and such. But I don't really understand that kind of pettiness, other than it exists and I have no idea how to fix it.

Disclaimer: my opinions aren't likely valid, as I'm not really sure where my privilege starts and ends. I think I have a lot to start with, but I also worked hard to overcome some negative things, too. To me that's just life, but I suspect the ease with which I can say that without bitterness is perhaps a good indicator of what "privilege" is in the meta sense. I also am by no means a qualified feminist, merely someone confused and vaguely concerned that I may be doing wrong by someone else for some thoughtless, inconsiderate reason.

[0] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you're_a_dog

Why is it wrong to consider a girl programming to be noteworthy or surprising? If it's true that females are underrepresented in programming or technology careers, which is the whole point of most of this thread, then this reaction seems completely appropriate.

Think of it this way: you meet a woman at a meetup about a technical topic, and you find you have projects/interests in common. If you spend the whole conversation interrogating her about how/why she learned to code, asking her questions about what her boyfriend/significant other/husband does or what he thinks about her coding, or asking for her "feminine opinion" on your consumer startup, you are a dick.

If you treat her as a PERSON, not a novelty, and talk about those interests that are relevant to the meetup, that's decent behavior.

It's about the coding, not the gender (stupid).

Sure, but that's basically saying that "being a dick is being a dick." You could also be a dick by treating a world-class athlete as a performing dog. You can be a dick about anything, regardless of how unoffensive that thing is on its own. But that's not what the original statement was talking about. It explicitly said that considering it noteworthy or surprising is inherently bad.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6977836

My example you quoted was an example of how a comment could unintentionally go sour; I think the term is triggering. But you're right - there's nothing wrong with noticing. Making an uncomfortable point of it is wrong-ish; making an encouraging point of it could very well be good.

Many of the suggestions cover helping clandestinely: the article notes providing effort to help move along applications to YC for women. I would assume pains would be taken to not make the women applying feel like they are being given application assistance due to incompetence, but rather simply as a way of accelerating their application out of eagerness and support, merely greasing the bureaucracy's wheels, if you will. (Though I should note that it's likely impolite to even mention misconstruing it that way - but I prefer games of perfect information and I don't think it should be offensive to talk about failure modes of social plans.) Hackers generally don't like creating special cases, so this may seem inelegant, but life's pretty inelegant socially, so such a suggestion is likely a pragmatic concession as a positive means to an end.

Given my lack of many social graces, I err on the side of hastily qualified awkward corrections. YMMV!

Nevertheless, in a way I still find myself subscribing to the idea that people in tech tend to fit these stereotypes. If I imagine a hypothetical group of [company name here] devs, I imagine them as all anime-watching gamer bros. On the other hand, when I actually encounter any particular developer, it would surprise me more to learn that they are an anime-watching gamer than it would to learn that they are not. I somehow picture groups of people to be members of a cultural group that I consider to be a minority.

I think this apparent contradiction might be caused by a discrepancy with how tech professionals are portrayed in media (as anime-watching gamer bros) with how they actually tend to appear when I meet them in person ('normal' yuppies, often young parents or 'DINKs', with a wide variety of hobbies and interests).

> evaluate programmers, it over-relies on heuristics and

> cultural traits that favor people who "fit the mold."

I think this is mostly wrong. It's hard to objectively evaluate many professions. How do you evaluate marketing professionals, or lawyers, or graphic designers? It's all fuzzy. And it's especially fuzzy for 22 years olds without a track record of experience to look at. I don't think that software companies do it much differently than anyone else when it comes to hiring. We base decisions on gateways like prestigious degrees. We look at whatever experience we can (even if it's just a github repo). And we conduct interviews where we do our best to ask real world questions.

Is this process perfect? Of course not. But is it pretty good? I think so. It's obvious who the great programmers are. It's obvious which ones are awful. And there's a mushy middle where it's hard to tell who's gonna work out and who isn't. I suspect that most other fields are about the same in this respect.

There's a lot more similarity at the level of experienced hiring obviously. And this model of hiring is expensive. But it also has benefits. Firms create new professionals from raw materials. They don't have to wait for trained professionals to walk in the door.

It's interesting to think about the first point though. Why are training practices different in software? I can think of a couple of hypotheses:

A) Programming is one of few fields where it's possible to self train. B) Programming is a relatively young field that hasn't matured enough to develop rigorous training practices. C) Software companies aren't profitable enough to support expensive training programs. D) Training of programmers is a relatively futile endeavor as most programming success will come from innate talent that is either present or not in any given individual.

Just off the top of my head I put the most weight on A and C (especially for startups) though I'm fairly uncertain. There might also be other reasons I haven't thought of.

It happens so often that I will make an observational statement that is interpreted as a value judgment, that I've started avoiding it. Because even if I carefully point out that it is an observation, and even point out that my observation might be wrong, it often results in a discussion that I didn't want to start.

I've noticed this disconnect especially often with my more artistic friends. It's like they can't discern a statement from an opinion. They also tend to have an intense hatred for any statement that aggregates, preferring to stick to direct observation, but that's another story.

Seriously what the fuck does this mean? These words try so hard to appear to be insightful but are utterly meaningless.

I lack the privilege of understanding this.

They fall prey to bad logic: "If privilege exists then I am a bad person. I am not a bad person. Therefore privilege does not exist." The problem is the first implication, that acknowledging one's privilege somehow makes one a bad person or that it is "bad" to be privileged.

The conclusion is worse than unsound, though, because it denies something which has a material impact on many people's lives.

His words are clear and concise, IMO.

Suppose you accuse me of being a witch. I deny it. In response, you claim that my repeated, insidious denial of being a witch just reinforces my witchiness and allows it to feed on itself. do you see how you've just (a) changed the nature of the accusation in a way that makes it weird and meta, (b) unfairly rendered the attack unanswerable?

Or consider: "Only a witch denies being a witch - denying it just makes it worse! You have to first ADMIT you are a witch and come to terms with it. I admit I'm one and I struggle with it daily - so should you!"

The quality and provocative nature of your analogy not withstanding, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. The comment to which you're replying is my attempt to unpack it. What about my comment wasn't clear for you?

For example, I see in your intentionally provocative analogy the same mistaken logic I described, that somehow the existence of privilege and the idea that you are privileged in certain ways is equivalent to being a witch and therefore that being privileged makes you a "bad person." I spelled out how that's a mistake many people make when thinking about privilege and yet you seem to be making it in this very comment.

Anyhow, I'll try to illustrate why privilege is not a scarlet letter but denying it can make one complicit.

Here's a hilarious Louis CK skit on the subject of racial privilege: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4f9zR5yzY

"I'm white. Thank God for that shit, boy. That is a huge leg up, are you kidding me? I love being white, I really do. Seriously, if you're not white, this shit is thoroughly good. Let me be clear, by the way, I'm not saying that white people are better. I'm saying that being white is clearly better. Who could even argue? If it was an option, I would re-up every year!"

Here's a way in which I am privileged: I can spend $1000 on a pair of glasses I really like and not have to think twice — or even once — about it. I don't think this makes me a bad person for doing it, let alone being able to do it. Nevertheless, most people would not just balk at paying that much, but wouldn't even consider the idea. Growing up my family couldn't really afford glasses (or doctors visits or dentist visits or....), so the situation still feels really weird to me.

Here's another way: I will never have to so much as think about being stopped and frisked in NYC, unlike, say, Forest Whitaker (http://pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com/2013/02/16/forest-whit...).

Here's yet another way: if I'm in a room with a female engineer I know talking to two other men that neither of us know, I would bet hard money virtually all of the technical questions will be directed at me. At that moment I have a choice. I could answer those questions and go on my way. I could point out what's happening, perhaps by asking, "Why are you asking me all the questions? Tara is just as capable of answering them as I am." I could maybe take a more tactful middle-ground and say something like, "I'm not sure. You should ask Tara those questions — she's the expert." And so on.

I am not a bad person for benefitting from that privilege, but if I were to deny it I would be complicit in reinforcing those patterns of behavior, abuse, and oppression.

So, yeah, totally like being a witch! Good analogy!

I'll end with this: http://www.harkavagrant.com/?id=341

If I were a witch, I wouldn't be ashamed of it. I'd be proud of being a witch. There's nothing inherently wrong with being a witch - witches are cool. The fact remains that the claim "if you deny being an X, that REINFORCES X-ness and lets X feed upon itself" is toxic and ridiculous. And the main other assertion I could think of that had this bizarre characteristic besides privilege was "you're a witch!" (I suppose "you're a racist" also has that attribute, but I didn't want to go there. Can you think of others?) "Witch" accusations are great for our purposes because it really has no moral characteristic at all. We all know witches don't exist and can't exist and I assume we don't collectively subscribe to religions that are afraid of them (or even if we do, we know that that fear is silly), so it's safe to use them as an example.

So. With regard to any particular person, if they say "I'm not a witch" that MIGHT just mean they're not a witch or they don't regard themselves as one. And that's OKAY. Even if the claim is MISTAKEN and they actually ARE a witch, it's not the case that denying it is uniquely evil. When witch-hunters claim it is, they're wrong. Any person denying that THEY are X doesn't really say anything about whether X COULD exist generally.

> There's also something poetic since claims of "witchery" are a centuries-old tool used to silence women.

Similarly, claims of "privilege" appear to be a modern tool used to silence men. The core essence of privilege seems to be that you have it when a bunch of people (of the right sort) SAY you have it (whether you agree or not) and it's considered rude/offensive/impossible to deny it.

You said: > I'll try to illustrate why privilege is not a scarlet letter but denying it can make one complicit.

...but never did anything to illustrate why denying it "can make one complicit" - you merely asserted this. So I assert the contrary: there is nothing wrong with simply being colorblind, gender-blind, every-other-characteristic-blind and treating people as HUMAN BEINGS first and foremost. Overemphasizing race/gender/handicap is at least as big a potential problem as underemphasizing it. If you always bend over backwards to make sure Tara gets asked what you feel are the appropriate number of questions given her gender, that is patronizing to her. Simply treating her as an equal would be more respectful and productive. Why would you need awareness of "privilege" to pass questioners to the person in the room who is the most relevant expert?

Nobody denies that some people have more advantages than other people. The only thing we're denying is that having some random set of advantages invalidates your opinion. The difference between privilege (what we're arguing about) and advantage (what you just gave examples of) is that privilege has the immediate additional connotation "and therefore you should shut up because it's wrong for you to express views on this matter". If it didn't, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

BTW, Louis CK's routine is funny but he's wrong. (Which is part of what makes it funny.)

I don't buy it.

(1) http://www.goldenseeds.com

http://www2.nau.edu/~bio372-c/class/behavior/sexdif1.htm

  Men and women display patterns of behavioral and cognitive 
  differences that reflect varying hormonal influences on 
  brain development

  By Doreen Kimura (May 13, 2002)

  Men and women differ not only in their physical attributes 
  and reproductive function but also in many other 
  characteristics, including the way they solve intellectual 
  problems. For the past few decades, it has been 
  ideologically fashionable to insist that these behavioral 
  differences are minimal and are the consequence of 
  variations in experience during development before and 
  after adolescence. Evidence accumulated more recently, 
  however, suggests that the effects of sex hormones on brain 
  organization occur so early in life that from the start the 
  environment is acting on differently wired brains in boys 
  and girls. Such effects make evaluating the role of 
  experience, independent of physiological predisposition, a 
  difficult if not dubious task. The biological bases of sex 
  differences in brain and behavior have become much better 
  known through increasing numbers of behavioral, 
  neurological and endocrinological studies.

  Sex differences in problem solving have been systematically 
  studied in adults in laboratory situations. On average, men 
  perform better than women at certain spatial tasks. In 
  particular, men seem to have an advantage in tests that 
  require the subject to imagine rotating an object or 
  manipulating it in some other way. They also outperform 
  women in mathematical reasoning tests and in navigating 
  their way through a route. Further, men exhibit more 
  accuracy in tests of target-directed motor skills--that is, 
  in guiding or intercepting projectiles.

  Women, on average, excel on tests that measure recall of 
  words and on tests that challenge the person to find words 
  that begin with a specific letter or fulfill some other 
  constraint. They also tend to be better than men at rapidly 
  identifying matching items and performing certain precision 
  manual tasks, such as placing pegs in designated holes on a 
  board.

http://www2.nau.edu/~bio372-c/images/00018E9D-879D-1D06-8E49...

Here is Louann Brizendine of UCSF:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Female-Brain-Louann-Brizendine/dp/...

  Review 1: Louann Brizendine, a neuropsychiatrist at the 
  University of California, San Francisco, explores 
  groundbreaking issues in brain science...Brizendine 
  graduated from the Yale University School of Medicine and 
  draws on research done at the Women's and Teen Girls' Mood 
  and Hormone Clinic, which she founded at UCSF in 1994.

  Review 2 :This comprehensive new look at the hormonal 
  roller coaster  that rules women's lives down to the 
  cellular level, "a user's guide to new research about the 
  female brain and the neurobehavioral systems that make us 
  women," offers a trove of information, as well as some 
  stunning insights. Though referenced like a work of 
  research, Brizedine's writing style is fully accessible. 
  Brizendine provides a fascinating look at the life cycle of 
  the female brain from birth ("baby girls will connect 
  emotionally in ways that baby boys don't") to birthing 
  ("Motherhood changes you because it literally alters a 
  woman's brain-structurally, functionally, and in many ways, 
  irreversibly") to menopause (when "the female brain is   
  nowhere near ready to retire") and beyond.

For example, here's what PG recently said on Twitter (https://twitter.com/paulg/status/416994260995416064):

> Will write about female founders, but traveling all day so it will have to wait. Reserve judgment? Prob too much to hope for, alas.

The responses are typical of feminist activists:

1. > pg translated: "Shut up. All I did in the last decade is not what I believe in, I will graciously explain it to you when I see fit"

2. > Obviously not an important enough issue to deal with now.

3. > please DO NOT write about women founders until you have a better fucking grasp on the issue.

4. > oh don't you even try to equate being a douchebag "startup" founder with being a hacker

The privilege topic has been discussed to death.

If someone were to use "privilege" to mean "unearned benefits for individuals in specific contexts", then no one could have a problem with it. We could talk about:

- female privileges in the workplace

- male privileges in the workplace

- white privileges at university

- black privileges at university

- gay privileges at bars

- straight privileges at bars

- American-born privileges regarding medical care

- Canadian-born privileges regarding medical care

- etc.

Instead, third-wave feminists have transformed the notion of "privilege" into a targeted weapon for belittling and denigrating the specific demographics they deem hostile to their goals.

When a "friendly" demographic does well, it's a result of hard work and determination. For example, when young women earn more than young men, or when young women graduate from college at far higher rates than young men, it's a result of hard work and determination.

Another example: Have you ever seen tptacek complain about the Asian tech problem, the Indian tech problem, or the Jewish tech problem? Nope. Those people worked hard! That is why they're wildly overrepresented. No need to scold them. No need to demand flagellation from them.

But men doing well? White men? Oh god, it's just their privilege. We need to fix this, and we'll know the problem isn't fixed as long as there is any disparity.

I'd like to see some stats to back that up, i.e. police reports. Sounds like a generalization that's probably not based in reality. Every investor isn't a rapist waiting for a shot at a female CEO.

In my mind that last parenthesised bit stands out like I don't know what... What the f*...?!? :(

That quote makes more sense if you replace "that investor" with "a investor". It seems plausible that founders have to deal with many founders, and it seems further plausible that many founders have had at least one bad experience.

9/10ths of founders having at least one bad experience with an investor and founders having bad experiences with 9/10 investors are obviously two very different things.

Of course we should obviously still be asking ourselves "what the fuck?!?"

Sure: don't talk to their writers.

Yes, there are problems women face in STEM fields. No, getting everyone angry at pg isn't gonna help.

I wrote down some of my thoughts on this issue here: https://medium.com/p/f7efb084e8a

How does the Tumblr owner feel about his platform being used by this toxic community?

Why?

3. ‘Not discouraging’ women isn’t enough - actively encourage them.

Again, why?

I don't understand this "get women in X" movement. There are women everywhere, women are doing fine from what I can see in the tech space.

Why must I go out of my way to specifically pave a way for women in everything I do?

Why not blacks? Why not midgets? Why not "X deviation from being a while male?"

Read my previous comment history for my stance as I'm not going to copy paste everything here. I honestly don't get it. You have all the same opportunities men do, at least in this space.

Women are so entitled nowadays.

Also the "Why not blacks? Why not midgets?" line is a particularly poor choice. My understanding is that little people do not like being called midgets, and by slurring them in the same breath that you speak of women and blacks, you give the impression that women, blacks, and midgets are all categories of people you disrespect.

Finally, entitlement refers to the sense that you deserve what you have, not the feeling that you deserve something you ought to have but don't have.

Therefore, ironically, YOU are the entitled one here. You feel you're entitled to carry on as you have been carrying on.

By not paying extra attention to females?

Buddy, I'm here to get a job done, if my applicant is a woman and she is good, I will hire her. Move on with your bullshit.

Tell me why anyone should expect that you are this way when discussing gender, colour, and stature, but miraculously transform into an open-minded and welcoming person when discussing technical ideas?

I'm open to discovering new things, but my bet is that you're rude and bullying about everything, not just this topic.

One upon a time businesspeople would drink together, because alcohol would lower inhibitions so it would strip away the false friendliness and you could discover what people were really like.

Now we have the internet, and no alcohol is needed for people to drop the pretence of civility.

"You have all the same opportunities men do, at least in this space."

I also agree with you. But I'm open to being proven wrong. And I think that's the sticking point here. Some audiences (male or female, doesn't matter) believe that women do not have the same opportunities as men.

In my experience, technology is one of the most meritocratic fields. With or without an education, come in with working code and you have a job. Now, if you're going to move goal posts and say, "well the more well off have more opportunities to write code", that is a different, much more complicated discussion. But as for the primary metric here, raw performance, working code, a running portfolio, I don't see how it is a function of genitalia or gender expression.

In other aspects of life I'm a triple minority. And yet here I am, a working engineer. Where are my handouts? Where are my support groups? Where is my encouragement?

So yeah, I totally agree with you.

"Women are so entitled nowadays."

I wouldn't say that. I would say the people making the most noise are entitled. Everyone else is too busy doing actual work.

(Am I calling social justice not real work? Of course not. It's just ... it feels misguided/trolly at times, when it isn't presented in a rational manner.)

Check your sensitivity. That's how I feel from my own experience dealing with women. A lot of them feel that they are being crushed by men with no real world example, it's a large modern bandwagon. Modern day pseudo-feminism, that is.

Would you accept a similarly general negative statement about men? All men are lazy? All men put women down? Or would you consider any such statement too generalising?

From a purely selfish standpoint, theres a lot of money to be made and a lot less competition in female-customer-oriented startup spaces - take the phenomenal success of Pinterest for an easy example - unless you're only building for yourself, why would you be opposed to adding a perspective that could potentially double your market size.

*I'm personally bothered by the gender gap for a plethora of reasons that go far beyond purely economic, but women control something like 70% of household spending in the USA, and there's a lot of compelling opportunities there even leaving aside any larger equitable society issues.

I still don't get the movement. Everyone knows Computer Science exists. It's just not an interesting or attractive field for everyone. Let's be honest, when you have prospective high school grads you can't make CS more interesting than say, Physics, Bio, Chemistry. A majority of women flock to those fields and humanities. It's not sexism, it's not the patriarchy, it's just statistics.

It just seems like a lot of women just aren't interested in CS, and I get that. It's a fascinating field, but I can totally see why it's not populated with women.

Anyways, all I'm trying to say is when it comes down to it, and I see a good female candidate, I will hire her. I really don't care about the gender, just I get way fewer females candidates. It is what it is.

Why not host more women friendly CS/Info tech workshops to spread interest?

These kinds of blog posts are just hot wind without any real foundation. Affirmative action isn't the way to go about it, spreading interest in the field at an early stage, however, is.

Example: CS classes in high school don't hold a candle to the sciences and are very very poorly taught for the most part. Other sciences are exciting, they out number CS classes like 20 to 1.

The "problem" is the girl with straight As in my high school BC calculus class who refused to take CS because "that's hard, I wouldn't be good at it" (true story, and it confused the hell out of me when she said it). The fact of the matter is people AREN'T just "not interested". I really wouldn't care if only 0.2% of the tech industry was female or <insert-label-here>, so long as it's because they either aren't capable or interested. But I don't buy that. We've come a long, long, long way, but we're not there yet. And all the screaming and finger-pointing, such as that which PG has received (misquoted or not), just distracts from addressing what actually matters.

P.S. We actually explicitly argued AGAINST affirmative action in the post. I could go on about that for ages, but I'll just say this: I want to be held to the same standards as any other demographic, be it race, sex, or shirt color, and I don't want to have to question the legitimacy of my failures OR successes. If I thought I'd been given a handout because I have two X chromosomes, I'd be pissed.

Since it is not an imbalance that can be pinned on biology (perhaps unlike an imbalance in world weightlifting records?), the cause of the imbalance must be somehow 'nurture' related. Even if we do not consider the imbalance itself to be problematic, the imbalance is considered to be the result of some sort of bias that is assumed to be problematic.

For example, fewer women in tech may not be considered problematic in and of itself (though I believe many people think that it is), but the existence of this imbalance may be evidence of systematic sexual harassment, which certainly is problematic.

I might be getting this wrong, so I welcome corrections.

Most of the men I know and have talked to specifically about fighting for pay, have in fact put up a fight for their pay, while the women I worked with believed that their work will pay for itself and have no fought for a higher pay raise. The women that are top tier managers, were actually just as vicious as the guys, and by being this way, have attained the same things.

People are so quick to hop on to the social justice brigade when in reality its a much more complicated and personal issue, being lumped into the gender category.

The reason we need to actively encourage women (more so than men) to get into tech is that the tech industry is believed to be fundamentally and structurally sexist. So, for the same reason that victims of violence need special and deliberate treatment, the victims of the structural misogyny need special and deliberate treatment.

This isn't just for getting female children interested in technology, it is even the case for female entrepreneurs seeking funding. Regarding the low percentage of VC funds going to female entrepreneurs, a prominent tech feminist recently said that the percentage of female applicants is irrelevant, and that the men who run the industry should be seeking out and finding female entrepreneurs. https://mobile.twitter.com/shanley/status/417035978025357312... https://mobile.twitter.com/shanley/status/417036172448104448...

Interestingly, tech feminism seems to even support the idea that female entrepreneurs should not apply for VC funding, because it is so misogynistic. https://mobile.twitter.com/CynthiaSchames/status/41703807634...

No. Just no. It's true that we have the same opportunities to TRY (i.e., submit resumes, build what we wish, etc.), but not to actually be IN the space. Have you ever been interviewed and had a male interviewer walk into the room, take one look at you, and immediately change his body language and adopt a condescending tone? Had it happen more than once in a 2 week period? I have. Let me tell you how fun that was. I hadn't even opened my mouth yet.

This is just one example of how entry for women can be a challenge. Clearly not everyone looks at women so blatantly with discomfort, but the fact that it even happens to a noticeable extent is enough to posit that there are completely disparate opportunities for men and women in tech.

There are so many more non-negligible ways women have more of a challenge to enter the tech world, but I wanted to quickly illustrate one example to bring attention to the utter fallacy of your statement.

So where does that leave us white males working in tech?

1. We have to recognise that the gender imbalance is a problem and accept that it should be solved

2. We have to recognise there are ways we can help that are NOT simply "hire a weaker female applicant just to balance the genders"

3. Promote female participation! Sponsor school programs. Create female-only internships. Make sure that everybody in your workplace is actively educated about structural sexism so that things are as comfortable as possible for your female employees. Ensure salaries are equal.

We need to help send the signal to young women contemplating their careers that the tech industry welcomes them. Then, maybe 5 or 10 years from now, we'll be getting closer to equal applicants.

> Women are so entitled nowadays.

I don't know if you're just incredibly tone deaf, callous to what your words mean, or are trying to be funny.

If you think that women have equal ability to men (by your comment, maybe you don't), and you think that people should hold jobs equal to their abilities, then you should wonder why 50% of your colleagues aren't women...

The percentage of women applying for pure CS related jobs (not business jobs, but specifically tech) is very little.

It's not my problem that a small part of the resumes I get are women. It's not sexism. It's just statistics.

I work a majority of women actually, they out number us very very hard.

I've yet to find a substantial argument for the men against women in tech movement. Did someone yell into your face "get out of my office you fucking WHORE", or is there some VC that subscribes purely to "I ONLY EVER HIRE MEN". Is there some CEO that raped his co workers?

All I'm seeing is a few nancies getting offended at:

a) they didn't get hired likely because they were not good enough, not because they are women

b) women that feel they are entitled to get offended at any little off putting remark/joke/jab.

Downvote me, I really don't care.

edit: gay or effeminate, as a slur.

Yes, those people too.

> Women are so entitled nowadays.

GODDAMN THOSE LAZY WHORES FOR WANTING EQUAL PAY FOR THE SAME WORK.

From personal experience, a little anecdote:

When I was first hired as a junior developer, I was offered 40k. Me, along with a few women, and a few junior guys.

Now, is it sexism that:

a) I demanded hire pay and was in pay negotiation for 2 months before I was bumped to 60 because I made a compelling case, a long with a few of the guys?

b) That the women who were offered the same position signed off immediately on the agreement?

There is no "we pay women less for the same job" mantra anywhere that matters, and if there is, please point to a concrete example.

It's not my fault that I'm willing to risk a little and fight for higher pay and potential unemployment for doing so.

Yes, yes it is.

It's freaking weird that HN has this blind spot.

We get fired, we get DEMOTED when asking for a raise. We have a lot less to negotiate with. So we stop when it's tolerable, because the stakes are different for us. We have to be the absolute top of our game to compete.

Citation needed.

Well that straw-manned quickly.