[mnicole]

No one's saying women need to be coddled; the problem is that people recognize that the current state of the industry/the internet are jerks. You can only tell people to ignore bullying so long, especially when those doing the bullying aren't being punished, but those that are being victimized by it are being told to instead change this perceived weakness about themselves.

People should not have to worry about being made fun of while they're trying to learn something difficult. Recently we had that female Mozilla employee whose code (for a personal project, no less) was made fun of by three semi-prominent developers on Twitter. The consensus on HN was that there was nothing wrong with her code, but that she was being picked on solely for being a girl. In bringing the issue up, two of the three apologized, with the third going the route of "It isn't my fault you are offended,".

That is why it is important to foster good relationships, positivity and trust early-on. It has nothing to do with treating anyone like a princess and everything to do with the truth of how people treat women online (and off) and allowing these girls to find mentors and people that inspire them that they can better relate to.

The commenter you linked to doesn't realize that within that repo, there's a Team of everyone that signed up for this, allowing them to start projects and teach amongst themselves. That is the end-game here; allow people to learn without concern. No one seemed to have a problem with the concept of private repos before this and the Ada Initiative's private repo was highly successful; I wonder why.

[mnicole]

Instead of feeding the trolls responding to one aspect of my post that nobody actually has any evidence of either way (David brings it up with the weak defense that he thinks people are too quick to rush to sexism and that's a "problem" -- as if being quick to be an unnecessary asshole isn't the overarching issue to begin with), here are some relevant quotes from her initial post that illustrate why the private repos are important:

> I’m lucky to have friends in this industry that know me in person and through my work, and thus feel more compelled to speak up.

> I evangelize open source whenever I meet new coders or go to meetups. I tell them to make something that they would find useful and put it out there. Can you imagine if one of these new open sourcerers took my advice and got this response, without the support I had. Can you imagine?

And her follow-up:

> The emails I got really stuck out to me. Some people had their own stories that were way worse than mine. Sadly, several said that this is why they’d never open sourced anything.

[flootch]

Exsqueeze me?

Two people disagree with you what the consensus of that discussion was. Both people provide links. You did not.

Who is more likely remembering the discussion correctly? The folks that provide links to it, or the person that vaguely remembers it?

And we are trolls and you are not?

This must be feminist logic, because I see this sort of stuff at feminist websites everyday.

[danilocampos]

Any time you want to provide a simple answer here, that'd be fine. I understand sometimes difficult tasks take awhile, but we're going on days.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5635300

[mnicole]

> I see this sort of stuff at feminist websites everyday.

And I'm the troll. Figure your life out, dude.

[flootch]

Disagreeing with the nonsense that passes for argument at feminist websites doesn't make me a troll.

Quite the contrary, it places me squarely in the majority these days. Figure my life out? Feminism needs to figure out why so many people (including me) agree with so many feminist goals while disagreeing with feminist tactics.

[jorgenev]

> The consensus on HN was that there was nothing wrong with her code, but that she was being picked on solely for being a girl

False. They did not know she was a woman when they made fun of the code. And that was not the consensus. [1]

In fact, if they had known that she was a woman, they would have known better than to criticize. Us men in tech are well aware by now that you have to shelter women from the real world, lest they shatter into a million pieces.

Your delusions of persecution are staggering.

[1] Here is what they saw, no indication of femaleness: https://github.com/harthur/replace

> I’m not entirely sure what drives someone to the conclusion that because “harthur”, which turns out to be be “Heather”, is a woman, that by default, I would intentionally discriminate against [Women]. Not every single thing on the internet is about gender equality, or about a minority. In fact, the only reason I’m writing this post is because this kind of continued behavior on the internet is one of the primary reasons this is such a problem.

See http://justcramer.com/2013/01/24/being-wrong-on-the-internet...

And here is the relevant thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5106767

[danilocampos]

> Your delusions of persecution are staggering.

And they say this community's intolerant!

[flootch]

Recently we had that female Mozilla employee whose code (for a personal project, no less) was made fun of by three semi-prominent developers on Twitter. The consensus on HN was that there was nothing wrong with her code, but that she was being picked on solely for being a girl.

I think that was your consensus, but here is the thread, my very brief rescan of that doesn't indicate to me that her being a woman was the issue, the consensus seems to be that twitter makes it trivial to be an asshole, and many people are happy to jump in.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5106767

In general I see lots of assertion that men in tech treat women terribly, but not much evidence. The evidence that is there usually points to events that took place before employment.

In this case, our 17 year old heroine clearly faced no jerks in tech, though it is likely she faced jerks in high school.

And it's not at all clear to me that any abuse she has suffered as female nerd in high school is any worse than the abuse male nerds face.