[jackowayed]

The difference is that there is systematic injustice against women in our industry (and in society more broadly). One thing that can help fix this is by creating female spaces that help support women in the industry while being fre from overly-male culture that is the norm in our industry.

Here's a previous comment I've written in response to this question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5340455

[tiredofcareer]

The portions of my comment where I discuss privilege are the clues that I already knew that; that doesn't really answer my question. Your linked comment sort of does, but not exactly.

I still don't see it. This sentence is going to sound like I'm marginalizing women, but I have no other way to phrase it, so I'll just be blunt: do women want to be treated equally or do women want to be treated specially? Based on the winds of the industry, I sort of expected the former and don't see the place of female-only mailing lists in the world of that.

[grannyg00se]

The "oh, you're a white male, life must be easy for you" statement is a generalization and it's almost always offensive to directly attribute a generalization to a specific person. Nobody should go to any particular person and say "you have/are this because you belong to this general demographic". That's ignorant and in most circles would be considered rude. I think you have all the right in the world to loathe that kind of comment.

But in the big picture, there are established privileges for the majority. Not everybody benefits all the time. But there are subtle benefits that often go unnoticed.

I'm not an expert, but from what I've seen minority groups usually want to be treated equally but aren't, given the current pervasive environment. So they create their own environments in the meantime. All the while trying to change the primary environment so that eventually the segregated environments won't be necessary. Personally I'd prefer no segregated environments for any minorities, because I fear they reinforce the idea of segregation ,amplify difference, and encourage resentment. But I understand how it might be nice to have somewhere to get away from the primary environment from time to time.

[tiredofcareer]

I guess I see "you're a man, and therefore likely to discriminate against and marginalize me and therefore I cannot have you on my mailing list" as pretty much the same thing as "you're a woman, and I can pay you less". The magnitude of the likelihood is just different, is what we're saying. Is that fairly accurate?

> Personally I'd prefer no segregated environments for any minorities, because I fear they reinforce the idea of segregation ,amplify difference, and encourage resentment.

This is exactly where I am coming from. To the T.

[grannyg00se]

"you're a man, and therefore likely to discriminate against and marginalize me and therefore I cannot have you on my mailing list"

I think you're still too focused on the individual level here. It's not meant as a personal rejection. It's more like "We are a minority and need a place to get away from all of that sometimes".

Try to think of it as getting away from the troubles and stress that come with being a minority in the environment, rather than a way to get away from specific people.

And that is why a male only hacker group (for example) wouldn't look good. There would be no minority environment to try to get away from. The group would be excluding females simply because they are females. In order to be less offensive, there must be some other reason for the exclusion. A mailing list that only allows men suffering from erectile dysfunction probably wouldn't raise too much scorn from anybody.

So for any minority-only group, the trick is to accept that there are legitimate difficulties inherent with being part of that minority. Sometimes it takes effort to see things that way, especially if you are supposed to be part of the majority and see no benefit from it.

[tiredofcareer]

The parallels to sexism in your comment are striking and serve to confirm my point, in a way.

[jackowayed]

I think that a lot of people hold very strongly the ethic "one should never treat someone differently based on their gender" extremely strongly even at the expense of other valuable ethics like "we should strive for a society where women are equal to men".

As a result, people frequently come to ask "how could a group that excludes men possibly be ok, especially as a solution to 'sexism'?" The answer is that ethics are not as simple as "X is always bad". Ethics conflict, and then you have to weigh which one it's better to relax in that situation.

Even if you don't agree in this case, I hope most people can acknowledge that a reasonable person who believes that gender should not dictate what one can and cannot do can weigh the pros and cons and determine that the harm of excluding men from certain spaces is outweighed by the good of giving women a safe space where they feel more comfortable speaking and connecting, which may have the power to help erode the gender inequality in our industry and society.

It's a case of competing ethics, both of which most people support, that reasonable people can come down on either side of.

[unimpressive]

I think that, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, women want to be treated specially until it is sustainable to treat them equally.

If that makes sense.

EDIT: But the phrasing of that dichotomy I think misses what is really being asked here. If you accept that these passive aggressive acts are a sort of negative reinforcement brought on by neglecting to think about women as people. Then the request would be to keep women in mind while you go about your activities.