[sridca]

The very fact that your previous comment was misinterpreted by tptacek to the point of castigating the imaginary nerds to give up their imaginary rights to "cordon off computer science as a refuge free from nerdiness" indicates to me that those people who are wont to blame the men in tech have little empathy to begin with.

The nerd culture has been one of the most inclusive cultures I've been with. As esr wrote, "No compiler or network stack or 3-D printer gives a crap about the shape of your genitals or the color of your skin, and hackers as a culture don’t either." http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6642

[magicalist]

And Jefferson wrote "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...".

just because someone famous described a culture certainly doesn't mean it's true universally.

[sridca]

Of course not. The provided quote from Eric S. Raymond -- who, in my mind, is more of someone who intelligently analyzes these matters better than most people than is someone popular/ famous/ worshipped -- is to illustrate the 14 years of personal experience dealing with nerds (7 years in India; 7 years in the West; plus various interactions over the internet with people from other cultures) wherein it became clear, again and again, that the nerd culture has been one of the most inclusive cultures I've been with. Indeed, just in the last month I have seen two incidents where the non-nerds (the so called "women in tech") have clearly demonstrated their lack of empathy (and there have been more such incidents, outside of tech).