[rev_bird]

As I noted above, "advantage" was the wrong word, my apologies. There's tons of information out there about the disproportionate number of men working in tech, to say nothing of the salary discrepancies that cause so much drama here.

At the end of the day, women say they feel that they feel isolated by an industry that is overwhelmingly male, and that being able to connect with other women and discuss their experiences is a valuable way to stay in a career that they might otherwise bail on. I'm inclined to believe them.

[fvdessen]

> At the end of the day, women say they feel that they feel isolated by an industry that is overwhelmingly male.

I would like to offer another point of view; A lot of the males who ended up in that industry are, to be blunt, social rejects. They were not the popular kids in high school, but those guys who were playing magic in the corner. Being a male in IT is a big stigma in the outside world. Nerd and Geek are still insults. There are entire sitcoms (IT Guys, Big Bang Theory) designed to laugh at them. Many dating website have the option to filter out men working in IT. I usually hide the fact that I work in IT and have found it very beneficial.

Now that there's money and power involved, things are changing a bit. But I still feel that a large reason that the IT community is like it is because it was simply excluded from society at large for a long time and still is in a way.

I think that people coming now and turning the table around with such righteousness is a bit insensitive. How would you feel about being excluded from the club you build for yourself after having been excluded from everywhere else ?

[etjossem]

Revbird was right. Leap isn't about men trying to claw their way out of the stigma of their industry. It's about women having a place to share their experiences - because right now, it's really common for them not to feel welcome in male-dominated tech water coolers like HN or software subreddits.

Nobody is trying to exclude you from these larger spaces. Though if we want to get rid of the stigma of tech, we can start by making them more welcoming and inclusive.

In other words: if seeing something like Leap makes you viscerally mad, focus on fixing the reason it needs to exist in the first place.

[forgottenpass]

You'd probably like this essay if you haven't seen it before: https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c

[rev_bird]

>I would like to offer another point of view

Honestly, I don't give a shit about "another point of view," and that you think it matters here is a great illustration of why women would run for the hills, whichever hills don't have you on them.

This is not about someone's experience as a "social reject," this isn't about sad boys not being cool in high school because they like comic books. This is about women wanting a place to talk to other women about an experience that they feel isolates them from their male colleagues. That men sometimes feel lonely too has nothing to do with it.

[dang]

Your comments have been crossing into incivility in this thread—not principled incivility, just garden-variety internet swipes like "I don't give a shit", "this is nonsense", and "you're pretending". All this breaks the HN guidelines, regardless of how wrong someone else is or how right you are or feel. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and get on the right side of the rules if you want to keep commenting here.

[rev_bird]

Oh! A moderator! How nice of you to arrive. No need to worry, I won't be coming back.

[eevilspock]

What do you mean "advantage" is the wrong word? In general men clearly have an advantage in tech. Denying it is like denying that white people generally have an advantage in America.

That you feel compelled to apologize reflects the self-preserving power of this male advantage.