[DoofusOfDeath]

Thanks! That comment was helpful. If you don't mind I have some more questions still:

> Gathering us is an opportunity to find allies, but also models, people from who you can inspire from and find the strength to do what you want to do.

IIUC, you're saying that you see value in having (specifically) women as allies and sources of inspiration / strength. If that's true, why would that be?

> But I’m glad I have a place like Women Make for certain topics and to know I’m not alone in this.

Would you mind sharing a bit about what those topics are?

[mariedm]

"What would that be?", what do you mean by that? What I'm trying to say is that obviously I identify myself better with other women. And I want to be able to find other women entrepreneurs specifically because we face certain common issues. I think this comment sums up pretty well what it's like: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22129625.

[DoofusOfDeath]

Thanks, I hadn't seen that latter comment until you posted the link. That was very helpful.

I can't tell if your question to me was rhetorical, but I'll try to answer it just in case you're interested. (Apologies that it's long-winded, I couldn't find a way to make it brief.)

The comment you linked to includes this: "Would you rather hang out in a community where everyone fundamentally understands the challenges you face daily, or one where you have to explain the basic premise of your daily challenges when you initiate a conversation about them? (Or rather, would you prefer to hang out in both, or just the latter, since it's not really an either/or.)"

I understand the appeal of working in a team where, on an interpersonal level, I can easily and naturally relate to every one of my teammates. And it sounds like that's the vibe you're going for, IIUC.

When I'm leading a team in the tech industry, part of my job is to remove obstacles to the team's happiness and productivity. The kind of homogeneity mentioned above would undoubtedly prevent some of the problems that can arise in a diverse team. But my job is to make find ways to make a heterogeneous team happy and productive; turning it into a homogenous team (e.g. all members being the same sex) isn't an option that I have (or want).

So I'm hoping to understand, in as much detail as you're interested in sharing, what the factors are that make you more comfortable doing maker work with women than with men. Because perhaps that knowledge would help me create a better work environment for everyone on my teams.

[scott_s]

What you're missing is that this is not akin to the teams you have lead at work. Those teams are working towards delivering some product: the team exists for some outside purpose, and has an exterior goal.

That is entirely different from the community that is being built here. It is more a support group, and the goal is to enrich the lives of the member of the group. Support groups tend to be made up of people who have experienced similar hardships. They do have an exterior goal: try to make others experiencing that hardship in the wider community less likely. But that goal is secondary to the primary goal of being a place for people who have had similar experiences to support each other.

As an aside: when someone has said, "I experience this bad thing," it's bad form to continually questions them on the dimensions of their experience of that bad thing. I assume you are doing this in good faith, and haven't thought about it from this perspective. Since mariedm created an entire community around this, perhaps a better way of gaining an understanding is to read that community for a while.

[DoofusOfDeath]

> What you're missing is that this is not akin to the teams you have lead at work. Those teams are working towards delivering some product: the team exists for some outside purpose, and has an exterior goal.

Good call.

> As an aside: when someone has said, "I experience this bad thing," it's bad form to continually questions them on the dimensions of their experience of that bad thing. I assume you are doing this in good faith, and haven't thought about it from this perspective.

It seems I need to find a better way to recognize when a conversation has gotten into this territory. This could be one of those social-interaction observations that many find intuitive, but I need to have explained. I'm genuinely grateful for you pointing this out.

When someone makes a "Show HN" post, I've been assuming that they're interested in discussing the project's motivation in some depth. I gave some thought about whether or not I was drilling too far into the motivations, but I couldn't think of any likely answer that would be too painful to bring up in a public forum.

I also hoped that phrasing my question as "Would you mind sharing a bit about what those topics are?" would clearly indicate that I wasn't sure how far down this topic the author wanted to go, and that I didn't mean to pry. I figured worst-case scenario, the OP would ignore any questions she felt went too far.

[pezo1919]

I totally understand you. I am trying to understand -for hours- what concrete things might come up over there but I'm still facing walls. I don't get why no concrete examples live in the whole thread just vague generalizations (to me).