[emily37]

Well said. If I had read something like this when I was eight years old, I probably would have almost immediately backtracked and started looking for something else to do with my life. The author could instead tell her niece that being a game developer sounds like fun, and then help her deal with any discrimination as it comes up, if it comes up at all. But to start off a person's career with the message that she is going to be discriminated against, that she is going to be at a disadvantage, that she should watch out for all those people trying to drag her down... that's just sabotage.

[elptacek]

Sabotage is the right word. Also, it's a syllogistic fallacy, right?

If you asked 100 people if they perceived some disadvantage about themselves that impedes progress to their life goals, you would get 100 answers. And yet somehow there are 7bn of us, we build skyscrapers and send robots to Mars. Personally, I've had my fill of "if it bleeds, it leads."

[flurie]

This letter was not written for an eight-year-old. The real eight-year-old is used as an angle to garner sympathy from us, the intended audience, but the hypothetical eight-year-old is a MacGuffin.

[emily37]

Yes, I would hope that the author wouldn't include "sausage party" in a letter to her real niece. :) So let me rephrase: I don't see the point in making broad statements about the presence of discrimination in our field, because these statements will drive away people who might have had perfectly satisfying careers in tech completely unhampered by discrimination. In my experience, constantly being made aware of the gender imbalance has been much more damaging than any actual gender discrimination. (Though of course I'm sure many other members of underrepresented groups have not been as lucky.)