[burgerbrain]

I object to the connections drawn in this article. I am a tech professional which means it is not terribly uncommon to have the nerd/geek label placed upon me, but I have never and will never have anything to do with the comics/videogame culture being described here.

[drivebyacct2]

That doesn't seem to be the important part of the article? I think the title (ought to) imply "Some nerds..." anyway. Some people understand privilege better than others, often due to their own circumstances. Being gay has given me an interesting insight into privileges that span sexuality and gender issues and having a close female friend who tells me about her daily experiences repeatedly shocks me into new realizations of how good I have it as a male, even if not a straight male.

[burgerbrain]

That seems to be the entire focus of the article. A modified headline would have saved me my time.

An article about male privilege in the tech industry, which is what I expected seeing as this is HNs, I would have appreciated. This however meant nothing to me.

[drivebyacct2]

I guess I took it as more of a general intro to privilege for the lay-person or 'lay-nerd'. I mean, take the basic concepts of privilege and extend them to almost ANY females-in-tech-industry topic and you'll see it fits.

It's just like the thread a few weeks ago about women asking for raises or more competitive pay with a shocking number of HN users saying "it's their own fault for not asking for more", ignoring the research, discussions and psychology behind why women don't ask for raises (they're rejected, shunned in the workplace and often later let go).

(For the "record", I agree that there is a potential for a better discussion of male privilege that would be more appropriate for HN that would probably foster a more directed, specific discussion.)

[burgerbrain]

As an outside observer, I'd say that speaking about male privilege from the context of comic book stores is like speaking about racism from the context of 19th century Alabama. It's just so blatant to anybody disconnected from it that it is very hard to make comparisons to other contexts.

[mechanical_fish]

How fortunate for the slaves of 19th-century Alabama that the abolitionists of 19th-century New England did not think this way.

Though I'm sure plenty of people tried to convince Frederick Douglass to stop talking about Alabama all the time. It must have made for more than one uncomfortable dinner party.

Anyway, back to the point. Yes, this is a particularly blatant example of a male-privilege subculture, used in part for educational purposes. [1] You would prefer to begin a conversation about male privilege by discussing much more subtle examples? So that we can be treated to the usual two hundred pages' worth of denials that the examples are even real?

---

[1] Though in gamer and comic culture this is not an abstruse academic exercise. And these are not small subcultures, even if they apparently aren't quite big enough to encompass everyone.

[burgerbrain]

You are intentionally misrepresenting my comment. I vehemently disown any meaning you apparently see in it.

What I am saying is that if we attempted to talk about, say, allegations of racism in the YC process (a fairly popular discussion around here), it would not be effective to talk about 19th century Alabama.

If you did, everyone would just say, "well hell, we're not lynching slaves for sport, there clearly isn't actually a problem here."

Trying to base a discussion about sexism in the tech industry on something talking about comic book stores is similarly flawed. The tech industry is not the comic book store community. Everybody outside that community knows they are disgusting sexist pigs. It therefore bears little insight.

You may as well try to base the discussion on something about sexism at truckstops or stripclubs. Either would be equally effective starting points for a serious discussion.