[dictum]

It tells me that HN has more people who fear being accused of sexual assault than people who are afraid of suffering sexual assault.

Somehow the former group has trouble imagining the fear of the latter group is more likely, within its demographic, to happen, and its outcome more deeply damaging, because its damage is somehow related to emotions. No emotions allowed. We're working with capital-R Reason.

—

Next time I hear about "the pipeline" on HN, I'm going to imagine something like the fish tube.[0] If only we had such a tube to pipe potential hackers into engineering and computer science, we would have a more diverse industry.

[0]: https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-nihilistic-eu...

[DoreenMichele]

It tells me that HN has more people who fear being accused of sexual assault than people who are afraid of suffering sexual assault.

I don't know what your point is, but smearing all of HN based on the fact that it is a predominantly male environment isn't some kind of constructive path forward.

[dictum]

I would like to rewrite it into something less abrasive, but this was not intended to highlight the gender split. In some circumstances a group of men can be more empathetic towards a woman than a group of women would be.

I believe the default state is to be moved by what you can perceive as a more immediate danger. This doesn't stem from some underhanded camaraderie, one's mind is just more attuned to what can directly affect it.

Here, the gender split already makes HN more likely, when all comments are summed into a chaotic generalized opinion, to defend RMS by default. He's a man, he's a hacker, he's at the root of many things we take for granted.

The gender split is just some context (and not even the most important piece of context — if I had time to discuss this at length, I would posit that if HN or tech in general were evenly split, it would have the same lack of empathy, just manifested differently.) for the next paragraph, which is the real problem: pretending feelings, emotions and perceptions can be discarded. Which is what makes me resent HN sometimes, as the parent says:

> I'm not really sure why you're expressing derision towards people that don't want sexual assault trivialized. I dunno, I feel like reading these types of posts, which are prevalent in this thread, that I have less and less in common with people on Hacker News

Once emotions are discarded, you can justify even genocide as long as you can convene an outcome that is favorable to a majority.