[tptacek]

Paul Graham isn't keeping women out of technology. Nor do I believe he wants to. If anything, his interests would be served by there being more women in technology, and thus more candidates for YC.

Also, Valleywag is a cesspool. I ponied up for the whole interview at The Information. I'd rather eat a bug than talk about what a Gawker publication has to say.

But Paul Graham has said some things on this issue that I think are dumb. Moreover, I believe he spends a lot of time worrying about the ways things he says are misconstrued. Reputation is potential energy, as he (correctly) likes to say, and I think he's aware of how much energy is tied up in what he says. Knowing that he is speaking carefully on these issues does not make what he is saying easier to take.

It is one thing to suggest that we should correct biases and imbalances as early as we can, because the sooner someone gets started hacking, the sooner they'll be able to bring those skills to bear on the market. Sure, that's true and probably benign.

It is another thing entirely to suggest that special status is conferred on people who started hacking when they were 13, and that it might be "too late" for people who didn't to join the ranks of that elite.

It is one thing to suggest that there are people that have, for whatever reason (nature or nurture) a natural affinity to working with computer programs and technology. True. Benign.

It is another thing to project backwards from that the idea that if women were going to be good at coding, "they would have found it on their own". That's not true. It presumes that the most important factor in determining whether someone's going to be a good coder is that they have the affinity. But you need more than affinity: you need opportunity and support.

A gigantic blind spot men in technology have is that there are two sides to the problem of gender bias. The side of the coin everyone thinks about is prejudice and bias. Men hear about gender imbalance in technology and interrogate their conscience. "Do I think women are inherently less qualified then men? No! I've never made a decision based on that belief!" They're probably even right about that.

The coin has another side: privilege. Privilege is a simple concept. Certain kinds of people "fit the mold". Paul Graham knows what the typical successful startup hacker looks like. So do most people who work at technology companies. If you ask someone in our field at random to visualize an elite startup hacker and then take bets on the attributes of that imaginary person, you would be nuts to bet on anything but "male", "English-speaking", "20-40", and "white or Asian".

25-year-old English-speaking white males have a privilege, whether they like it or not, because they fit into everyone's mold of a startup hacker. They will sometimes be asked stupid, discouraging questions at job interviews. Like, "do you have any children, and, if so, how will you balance the work of taking care of them with the demanding schedule of this job?". Or, "when did you start coding? We're really looking not so much for someone who can execute this role, but rather who lives and breathes technology". You can tell by looking at some people that they "live and breathe technology" (guilty as charged). That's not a privilege at a bar or a White Sox game, but it is a privilege in our industry.

The existence of privilege is not a scarlet letter on young white dudes who code. But the forceful, repeated, insidious denial of the existence of that privilege is a problem: it reinforces the privilege and allows it to feed on itself.

[jfarmer]

First, I'll say, tptacek, virtually everything you write on HN is spot on, but it's most on when you're talking about issues of sexism, racism, power, and privilege. The tech industry suffers from a collective privilege-blindness and I appreciate anyone who spends any amount of their time and energy talking about it coherently and persuasively.

When I was in seventh grade, we were assigned to write a little speech about what we'd do if we were in charge of the school. One of my classmates, Dan, gave a speech about how he'd use computers to more rightly integrate school and home-life. After I was done, I asked, "What about people who don't have computers at home?" He responded with a look of confusion on his face, "What? You mean like poor people or something?"

My family didn't have enough money to afford a computer growing up. I got my first computer in 10th grade: a 486 running Windows 3.1 that my mother's boss was going to simply throw away. Dan's words felt like a slap in the face, even in 7th grade.

If I had read pg's words in 7th grade, they would have felt like a slap in the face, too. Getting my face slapped does not make me or anyone else more interested. It makes people think, "This thing isn't for me."

People in technology, especially men, are utterly blind to privilege. It's astounding. It's also frustrating because explaining privilege to someone who has never seriously experienced the lack of it is like trying to explain to a fish what it's like to breath without water.

Here's another story. I recently mentored a 13-year-old kid through an after-school non-profit. I taught him the basics of programming. He had all the affinity in the world, but it was still hard even with my guidance. Why? There was one laptop shared among all the members of the family — mother, father, 3 brothers, 2 sisters — and he'd only show up to our sessions with the laptop maybe 50% of the time. Any work he'd do between session would often be lost because other people would tinker with it. Everyone around him teased him for playing with computers so much and being so "nerdy" and "gay." Neither of his parents spoke much English — a Spanish translator had to be present when I was having an extended conversation with either.

But obviously my student just didn't want it bad enough.

Blagh.

[baddox]

But what is your proposed solution to this idea of privilege? It seems like you're more disappointed with a lack of awareness of it (although a young child shouldn't be blamed for ignorance of what everyone else's home is like), rather than the existence of it. So if I say "yes, I get it, I'm a white male and therefore life is statistically easier for me," have I sufficiently recognized my "privilege"? Or do I have to spend my entire life keeping to myself the fact that I occasionally have to work hard and occasionally still fail due to my own choices and abilities?

[aredridel]

It's not easy. Call it out. Respond to the biases that come from that position.

Yield the floor to those with less structural support when speaking. Encourage people who are ordinarily excluded. NOTICE AND CALL OUT. Use your privileged position to help where you can, and step out of the way when you can't.

It's pretty powerful when a room full of dudebros is silenced by the one guy who says "Uh ... that 'Aunt Tillie' you're designing for is actually damn smart, just hasn't used a computer yet" or "Uh, guys, you're forgetting HALF THE POPULATION". Or "That was sexist, jackass. Don't ever do that again." Or "Maybe we should acknowledge that having people who have families and would like to see them might like to participate here."

Some of these are actual statements of differing values. They are sharp instruments on wall of the bubble of the echo chamber. They're powerful.

And then, when you've women on your team, listen to them. Remember that status isn't conferred as readily on us. "She's just a junior dev" ... well, yeah, and might have been passed for a couple promotions. When you go out for an expensive meal with folks from a funding firm or industry cohorts, remember who might have had to check their bank balance before coming and may have passed. Try to include those voices. Call 'em up. Offer to pay for a meal -- or if you're in a position of company power, fix it structurally by making it not an individual problem.

And look for sources of bias and privilege. Don't just focus on women. Look for all the myriad ways that you can explain how someone ended up in the social heirarchy how they did, and think long and hard about what's fair. It won't feel nice if you came out on top by accident and you'll try to explain it away. Don't.

Even more telling is when you fail: What are the repercussions of failure for you? What might the repercussions for a woman on your team be? Are they different? That's an especially telling place to look, and it explains a lot of why women are paid less: their risks are bigger for the same gains.

Do spend your life checking it. Don't spend your entire life keeping your experiences to yourself: just be aware that your experiences aren't universal nor even prototypical. Don't be the default voice. Just a voice.

[jfarmer]

I'm not sure what you mean by "solution." To abolish privilege? That's neither possible nor desirable, IMO. Privilege exists wherever there's a differential in power for any reason.

The problem is being blind to it and not understanding how it operates in your life and the lives of others. The solution to that problem is being committed to developing a deep sense of empathy.

[auggierose]

Well, just lost me here. What is the point of recognising privilege if you are not trying to get rid of it?

[bri3d]

1) To understand the perception others may have of of things I say and to know when I don't understand something enough to talk about it. Knowing that my life experience has differed from that of others and that my statements are perceived differently because of my privileged background allows me to more efficiently communicate and prevents faux pas (like the original PG one that caused this whole furor in the first place).

2) To build empathy. Recognizing privilege allows me to more readily understand those who are not identical to myself and relate to them. In addition to making me (I feel) a better person, this enables me to more easily befriend a diverse set of people.

3) By consciously thinking about privilege as a concept, real toxic social and political structures which can be actively deconstructed become even more evident.

I see people complaining frequently about the use of the word "privilege" as though it's some kind of pejorative being used against them; in general, it's not. Rather, privilege is a way of thinking about the effects of one's background on their social and economic position by identifying taken-for-granted advantages that society has granted them.

Frankly when I first started learning about the concept of privilege it seemed obvious to me: of course those with different backgrounds have different sets of advantages. But thinking about the concepts consciously and with the ability to label them has really helped me to both identify inequalities and combat them where I am able.

[pwang]

> I see people complaining frequently about the use of the word "privilege" as though it's some kind of pejorative being used against them

If the people using this term didn't want it to be taken as a pejorative, perhaps they could have chosen a less loaded term, that didn't already have a legacy usage with negative connotation.

"Asymmetrically advantage", "special powers" etc. all would be fine. But when you tell someone they're "privileged", it's very hard for the average speaker of English who doesn't have 100+ hrs of reading feminist literature to not be somewhat offended. The vernacular implication of the term is that someone who is privileged "had it easy", or the effort they've put into achieving their position and status is somewhat invalidated because they had "natural advantages".

My observation is that one of the core dysfunctions of discussions about diversity in tech is that people don't properly respect how impossible it is to go from talking about ensembles and populations, to talking about the behaviors of individuals. Those are two entirely different regimes of theory. We might come up with all manner of fancy terms and bodies of theory to talk about systemic cycles of oppression, vicious cycles of privilege, etc. etc. But to use any of that theoretical framework to talk about the motivations or actions of a single individual is certainly fraught with error and presumption.

Physicists recognize that you can't go from a thermodynamical description of an ensemble of atoms to individual particle trajectories without explicitly having a statistical model of the distribution of particles. But people are so quick to jump down each others' throats with accusations and assumptions about "you're blind to X!" and "you're assuming Y!". It's really just kind of sad. Just as "heat" is a bulk property of a body of particles and is pretty much meaningless when talking about a single particle, I think that a concept like "privilege" is meaningful when talking about a particular demographic versus another demographic. But to say that any given individual "is privileged" because of the color of their skin or their parents' tax bracket is assuming too much, and informs nothing. Individual variance within the distribution is just too high. The Asian immigrant kid with the perfect SAT and lawyers for parents might have taken up coding to escape his parents yelling and fighting every night. Is that more or less privilege than the black girl in a middle class suburb with a huge supportive extended family? What does "privilege" even mean when regarded in such individualized context? What are the broad patterns of systemic inequality that is affecting each of these individuals, and how can you possibly demonstrate that they are the dominant (or even significant) factors in the trajectories of these two lives?

[jfarmer]

I don't want to derail the conversation since the #1 hurdle is the collective blindness people have to the concept on HN and in the tech community at large. It's a complex thing to understand and I don't claim to understand it perfectly or even well.

Everyone is privileged in certain ways that make them blind to other types of privilege. Feminists use the word "intersectionality" to describe this state of affairs.

Anyhow, the point (IMO) is to learn how to navigate in the world without unknowingly exercising your privilege to the detriment of others, like an oafish tourist who walks right through the middle of someone's rock garden because they didn't know any better and when they're informed respond with, "It was just a bunch of stupid rocks! What's the big deal?"

If you grok the concept of privilege, great! My experience is that on HN virtually nobody does. tptacek's comment above is the clearest I've ever seen on the subject here.

[mercer]

Spot on! Maybe it's beneficial to use a term that doesn't make people defensive ('privileged? me? I worked hard to get where I am!), but I do agree it's important to make people aware of it.

A week or so ago one of our former Dutch politicians wrote a column about 'the elite' in Holland. This resulted in a highly entertaining but tragic borderline-flamewar between said politician and some well-known Dutch people. Entertaining because it was fascinating to see such 'impactful' people commenting on an internet forum, and tragic because the discussion became about the term 'elite' and the perceived insult by the 'accused' individuals, rather than about the point of the article: pointing out the reality of there being an 'elite' and asking some relatively open questions on what this realization means.

[MaysonL]

So that all those assholes born on third base who think they hit triples will stop looking down on and discriminating against those who weren't.

[icebraining]

The last paragraph took some weight from your post, in my opinion. I agree with you in general, but comparing that description of your student with my own experience, I can't help but think that maybe he really doesn't want it enough.

Having a computer at home, he's in a much better position than I was, when I learned programming at 13 by going to a public PC for 3h/week. I also didn't know English, nor did I have any programming classes until many years later.

Later, my first home computer was a BASIC interpreter, and I also couldn't save the programs because it had no storage, so I wrote all the code to paper before shutting it down each time.

I know I'm probably missing a lot of hindrances you haven't described, so I won't judge the situation just from that, but it does make your post weaker, IMHO. Also, why haven't you got him a pen drive yet? ;)

[jfarmer]

It does sound like you wanted it more or at least had a way of approaching the problem that made it possible for you to get what you wanted more easily than my student did.

But let's teleport all the people pg or anyone else here would consider "hackers" into your situation at age 13. How many would've kept at it?

I'm also wondering why you left out the most important dimension, IMO, which is social support. Did your friends antagonize you for pursuing this as a child? Were there any other people in your life who understood even the faintest bit of what you were doing?

Anyhow, this isn't battle of the anecdotes, as if one has to win. It's easy to see the way out from the outside; it's another question when you're on the inside. It sounds like you were a precocious and intimidatingly determined child. I'm sure that's served you well in many things! :)

[icebraining]

Regarding social support, my friends didn't really know and my parents couldn't really help (they're both actors with no particular affinity for technology). As for the determination, unfortunately not, I was always a pretty lazy kid - I just freaking enjoyed it.

Anyhow, this isn't battle of the anecdotes, as if one has to win.

Sure, and as I said, I agree with your post, it's just that when you're talking about the poor conditions that many kids have, and the you describe one with a home computer and access to programming classes, it takes the strength from your point. I was picturing worse conditions, frankly.

[baddox]

> The coin has another side: privilege. Privilege is a simple concept.

Privilege is a bogus concept, at least in every manner it has been explained to me. Examine the example you provided. If most elite startup hackers are male, English speaking, 20-40, and white or Asian, then a person giving that characterization would be giving a reasonable one based on observation. What does this have to do with "privilege" or "fitting the mold"? And, more importantly, why should I feel guilty or have some additional responsibility simply because I, through no choice of my own other than refraining from suicide and sex reassignment surgery, fit into one of these "privileged" groups? You might as well claim that the winner of a paper rock scissors competition has privilege.

My questions are actually genuine and not rhetorical. I would appreciate responses, or perhaps corrections of my impression of the concept of privilege.

[shantanubala]

Privilege exists when the outward characteristics you describe are used as heuristics for filtering good coders from bad coders.

Unfortunately, most people are unaware of the heuristics they are using when performing such a task. LessWrong explains some of these errors in reasoning quite well [1][2]. When generalized to an entire population, these heuristics construct a "privilege" because anyone with characteristics that do not fit the heuristics will be unfairly disqualified.

Privilege is not an active act of oppression. By having privilege, you are not necessarily actively preventing someone from achieving success. However, the fact that someone has a harder time getting a job for no reason other than not satisfying heuristics for innate characteristics places you in a "privileged" position as a result.

[1]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lg/the_affect_heuristic/ [2]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lj/the_halo_effect/

EDIT: It is important to note that there are other sources of privilege. One example is the fact that females have a much higher probability of being victims of sexual assault. As a male, I spend less time worrying about my own safety (in general) - that is a privilege.

[Joeboy]

> As a male, I spend less time worrying about my own safety (in general) - that is a privilege.

You're far more likely to be assaulted, although your assault is less likely to be sexual in nature.

[baddox]

You're also more likely to be imprisoned, executed, and conscripted, and less likely to win a custody battle or get the first lifeboat from a sinking ship. But I think listing these things out is pointless in itself. We might as well list every disease we haven't acquired and every injury we haven't sustained.

[baddox]

Okay, so what should I do now that I recognize that I have privilege? Do I quit my job and forfeit my college degree, since I acquired both unfairly (I guess my own perception that I sometimes work hard and plan well is delusional)? Seriously, what is the end game of this concept of "privilege"? All anyone seems to say is to "check your privilege." Great, I accept that I have privilege according to your definition of it. What now?

[cokernel]

There is an excellent list of suggestions at http://blog.shrub.com/archives/tekanji/2006-03-08_146 . The short answer is, no, you don't quit your job and forfeit your college degree; you aren't bad for having privilege and "checking your privilege" isn't supposed to make you feel guilty for having it.

The post is a little long, but I think you would get more benefit out of reading it yourself than you would out of my poor attempts to summarize it.

[baddox]

That post is extremely long, and there's no way I'll make it far when it begins with things like:

> One of the greatest things we, as privileged people, can bring to a discussion being held by non-privileged groups is our closed mouths and open ears/minds. When you enter a minority space, you need to realize that this is their soapbox, not yours. Your privilege gives you many other soapboxes that you can take advantage of, so when participating in a discussion held by a non-privileged group or individual your primary goal is to pay attention to what they say about their issues, lives, and oppressions.

What rubbish. My views are worth less because of my privilege. In other words, any time there is a discussion or debate between two people, the person with less privilege is right, or at least has a greater right to express ideas. This idea of intellectual worth-asymmetry seems to always accompany claims regarding privilege, and I'll have nothing of it.

> Well, finding a balance between accepting your privilege and fighting against it is not easy. I still struggle with it on a daily basis. But, one way to start is to listen to and take feedback from non-privileged groups. They are a good judge of how your actions come across to them.

Of course, the best judge of an individual's reaction is that individual. That's a truism. But here we have another clear implication that the reactions of an individual with lower privilege are more proper or more valuable than the reactions of an individual with higher privilege.

> You Can Only Sympathize, Not Empathize...But, no matter how strong the link is, the facts remain that no two oppressions are the same. And it’s you, as the privileged party, who needs to be extra careful about when and how you draw links. While the intent may be to show solidarity, the result is all too often that you come off as defensive, trying to one-up the non-privileged groups and appropriate their oppression. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever try to make connections, but rather that you should think about how the connections you’re drawing will come off to others.

In other words, analogies are generally not allowed in discussions involving a privilege disparity. There goes one effective means of discourse.

> Revisiting “Politically Correct”...Part of engaging in a language of respect and equality is in recognizing the validity of a person’s choice to use language, and “politically correct” terms, even if you may not understand or agree with them.

Surely the irony of appealing to linguistic subjectivity to defend political correctness isn't lost on the author(s).

> The same power dynamics that create privilege have created a hierarchy of prejudice so that discrimination against a privileged group is not the same as discrimination against a non-priivleged group. This is because discrimination against a non-privileged group is backed up with institutionalized power, whereas discrimination against a privileged group is often a singular act and therefore easier to avoid.

Wow, let it never be said that arguments against this type of belief are straw man arguments, unless of course this article is satire. The notion that a male getting raped by a woman can in any way be seen as inherently different or less of an injustice than a woman getting raped by a man is, simply put, appalling.

> Intent Isn’t an Excuse...while malicious intent may add icing to the cake, it does not dictate whether or not an offense has been made. “That wasn’t my intent,” all too often translates into “your reactions to what I did are invalid because I didn’t mean any harm.”...It, in essense, privileges the sayer/doer’s opinion/feelings over that of the non-privileged person or group that they have offended.

And this article repeatedly makes it clear that the non-privileged person's opinions and feelings are more valuable.

> Make an Effort to Learn the Lingo...What’s not fine, however, is telling a non-privileged group that their terms are wrong. You, as the privileged participant, don’t get to define what is and is not appropriate usage in a minority space.

Well there goes linguistic relativity. Now it's clear that any terms used by less privileged people are correct, period.

That's as far as I made it. If there is eventually a reveal that the entire article is satire, then the joke is on me, although I wouldn't be surprised. There some serious Poe's law going on here.

[nollidge]

You say your questions are genuine, and then you obtusely interpret the answers you're given to suit the attitude you wish to project on your interlocutors. You could've saved everybody a lot of time if you didn't lie about your defensive intentions from the start.

[aredridel]

You're really into protecting your rhetorical devices, aren't you?

[jfarmer]

Did you read the first link, "A Primer on Privilege?" It's actually quite good: http://brown-betty.livejournal.com/305643.html

[jfarmer]

First, privilege is not a bogus concept. If you really believe that — about anything, not just privilege — you'll have a hard time learning it or amending your understanding of it because of things like confirmation bias.

Second, your probability is bad. You're confusing P(A|B) and P(B|A). This is understandable — lots of people do this all the time without realizing it, myself included.

Third, your understanding of privilege is confused. As a successful, white male who has started living in Silicon Valley, I acknowledge my privilege but do not feel guilty about it. That you've bound up the idea of shame in privilege might explain why you find it hard to understand — not because it makes the idea harder to understand but because your "body" is going to have a hard time swallowing an idea that tells you you're a bad person.

Here's one way to think of privilege. Privilege is the sum total of all the things big and small that you don't have to think about on a day to day basis but other people do.

For example, as an innocent white person being approached by a police officer, I never have to wonder whether this police officer is coming to help me or harass me. Indeed, I might even presume something like, "Oh, the officer must be coming to tell me something useful."

As a male, I never have to worry about getting raped while walking down a city street at night, or plan your evening so that I won't be in that situation.

As someone with means, I never have to think about whether you have enough money to buy food to last a week, or what it feels like to have to made a trade off between food or gas this week. Or the terror of being sick without insurance.

Now, you might know these things. I don't know and I'm not presuming. I don't even know whether you're white, male, or anything else. I'm just trying to paint a picture.

If you want reading, I recommend these two essays by John Scalzi: Being Poor (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/) and Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th...).

[baddox]

I still don't understand what to do with the concept. Anyone would be a fool to think that you can group people by some attribute (like ethnicity) and show correlations with other attributes (like income). (Granted, we might want to do a bit of work to see if the correlations are stronger than would be expected in a purely random distribution of attributes, but we can assume this is the case.) And, given those correlations, anyone can recognize that they are statistically likely to follow those same correlations based on their own group memberships. If that's what privilege means, then so be it, but it's not much more meaningful than saying "I'm thankful that I'm statistically more likely to be successful than people who die as children. John Scalzi could just as easily write an article about how not being born with a terrible disease or deformity is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

[jfarmer]

I have a hard time believing you're genuinely interested in understanding the concept since you're putting up resistance at every step. I'm not here to make you want to learn — I was presuming you already did.

If not, my mistake for engaging.

[baddox]

I'm putting up resistance because there is still very little I have heard that makes sense. I do consider myself a skeptic, and I think skepticism is a requirement for critical thinking rather than an obstacle to it.

[jfarmer]

A person willing to learn says, "That's interesting and it doesn't make sense to me for X, Y, and Z reasons. I'm obviously not getting something and am probably confused about something important." That is not what you're saying.

Being a skeptic is orthogonal to having that attitude.

Anyhow, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, ...

I'll just end it here and you can reply however you'd like or not at all. :)

[hajile]

While the first article describes poor rather well, the second article is meaningless. I grew up in one of those poor families. I know (unlike him apparently) that the biggest problem with escaping is the good'ol boy system that exists in many fields (but is far less prevalent in technology in my experience and doesn't discriminate on gender or even race so much as it discriminates against the unknown)

That said, technology is FAIR. My first interactions with programming were through a throw-away book on IBM BASIC at around age 10. Despite not having the computer access to program for real (much less of a problem today), I wrote many programs before getting my hands a book on a "real" programming language (my apologies and thanks to the author as it was pirated onto a school computer). A few years and an engineering degree later (courtesy of government loans), I have been able to break out moreso than I believe I could have in any other profession.

You see, for those who can understand technology, the barrier of entry is lower than it has ever been. Quite literally, all you need to know to start toward a job is to study any one of the hundreds of free resources available.

I do not believe that the poor must be at the mercy of Lady Serendipity. Despite all the problems, the person willing to expend the energy and (most importantly) learn continually may rise above their earlier standard of living as have I and many others. The issue is the will to take action -- the intent to rise above the status quo no matter what obstacles exist.

Jfarmer, were you ever that poor person? Are you that minority? If not, then the privilege argument indicates that no matter the article, it is impossible for you to understand (and for the record, I believe that anybody can understand if they desire). If so, then you stand with me as proof that there exists a way out. You should also recognize that the victimhood endorsed by the that privilege argument discourages and de-incentivizes people from taking action.

What is the solution to "privilege"? Does being aware of privilege change the way business is conducted? Will an employer suddenly hire an inferior candidate because that candidate is unprivileged? In the reverse, will the employer hire an inferior privileged candidate because that employer wishes to "keep the better candidate from becoming privileged"?

Those persons with money don't continue to make money because they fail to recognize and utilize talent wherever they find it. I've worked with people who complained about working 70+ hours during crunch time because they don't have my perspective (the one with two full-time jobs that aren't behind a keyboard), but that doesn't mean they don't recognize and utilize talent when they see it.

Finally, women (the group of discussion) are decidedly privileged compared to men. A poor woman still works indoors and often has people willing to assist (plus significant government aid). If she becomes the victim of violence, she has places to go. If she has no home, she will be able to find shelter.

In contrast, a poor man works dangerous jobs (I remember stitching up injuries because I couldn't afford going to a doctor) in bad working conditions (93% of workplace deaths are men in the US). He cannot rely on anybody as noone wants to help a man. If he is the victim of violence (76% of homicide victims in the US are men, his only source of "help" is incarceration (According to a major CDC study in 2010, the number of men raped (including those overlooked as "forced to penetrate" where they were raped by a woman, but the system labels it different) was almost equal to the number of women. When you account for all the men who go to prison for non-violent crime and are raped repeatedly for years, the number of male rape victims FAR outweigh female victims).

If he is homeless (80% of homeless are men in the US), he has nobody to go to. Men are discriminated against in school where female teachers grade them lower, penalize them for not acting like the girls in their class. Men drop make most of the failing grades and account for the vast majority of the dropouts. Men are then the minority in going to college and obtaining a degree (at all levels from an associates to a doctorate). It's little wonder that 80% of suicides in the US are men.

While these numbers are skewed away from white males toward minority males, the white males (by percentage and by total count) still vastly outnumber white females (and outnumber females of other races by a smaller margin). I wonder if we shouldn't be asking women (especially the upper-middle class white women who make the majority of such complainers) to "check their privilege".

Perhaps technology doesn't discriminate against women. Perhaps there's a reason why the countries considered the most egalitarian have FEWER women in STEM fields than other countries. Perhaps men having 6.8x more gray matter (while women have 10x more white matter) or mens brains being better at communicating from anterior to posterior (while womens brains are better at communicating laterally across hemispheres) isn't just for show. Perhaps studies showing that male and female children as young as one HOUR old already act different (male children preferring objects and female children preferring faces) shows that the brains of men and women are different. Perhaps there is a biological reason that when given the choice, the jobs that men and women appear to prefer are different.

If indeed there are biological preferences, then men (specifically Paul Graham) are not discriminating against women so much as privileged women are enjoying their freedom to do whatever job they want. Another factor that applies to startups is risk. Women tend to be much more risk-averse than men (it makes sense biologically as risk would not only kill them, but their children as well). If we consider that very few tech people create startups and relatively few women are in the technology fields related to those same startups (there are fewer women in these areas than there are overall women in tech) and we know that these women are far less likely to take such huge risks, then it stands to reason that extremely few women would even ask (with even fewer having marketable ideas). Once again, this is far closer to self-selection than bias.

[aredridel]

From the study abstract:

"Men and women apparently achieve similar IQ results with different brain regions, suggesting that there is no singular underlying neuroanatomical structure to general intelligence and that different types of brain designs may manifest equivalent intellectual performance."

So as always, MUCH more research needed before drawing that conclusion

[hajile]

You are correct, the IQ results are similar, but it is the differing biology and how it may affect career choice that is of interest (I am in no way implying that these differences make one gender intellectually superior to the other any more than I would argue for the superiority of Turing or Church).ther, some algorithms are more desirably expressed in one or the other.

I supplied information (without sources, but you appear to know google well enough) that there exist differences in human biology and hypothesize that these differences may offer explanation for observations of human behaviour. If a lack of absolutely irrefutable causal data is your only objection, then I suspect that the realm of psychology is not for you as such evidence is practically non-existent in that field.

[jfarmer]

Look, the most important thing here is to make sure that study can be used to confirm hajile's prior beliefs, ok? Let's keep our eye on the prize.

[hajile]

What prior beliefs? That observed behaviour may have a reason beyond "privilege" which cannot be disproved? (for proof I refer you to the mantra that "privileged people cannot realize they are privileged" which makes an accusation of privilege indistinguishable from a self-serving accusation from the perspective of the accused)

[andrewliebchen]

Great definition of privilege in this context, thank you.

[HCIdivision17]

My impression is that it's an implication of arbitrary social momentum. Where a hacker immediately brings to mind a twenty-something white male, other groups would need to expend more effort to be associated with it. Say a brilliantly clever black woman joined a discussion, she shouldn't stand out, but likely would; that's the social imbalance in play: brilliant and clever may not be the foremost and outstanding characteristics noticed.

The bad part is primarily the "arbitrary" bit, as there seems to be bias for characteristics that have nothing to do with personal traits we have control over, like learned skill. The "privilege" is the label for the background that seems to prime a person for easy access to this social group. Without such privilege, a person won't naturally be able to flow into the social group.

I don't think you're supposed to feel guilty, for the same reason lacking privilege shouldn't imply shame. I think it is by definition out of your control. But it can be mitigated over time. So only feel guilt if you help reinforce the imbalance (like commenting on a girl programming, which carries an implication of noteworthiness (since it was noted) and thus perhaps surprise (which could imply by extension social wrongness)). Such complaints may sound small and petty, but if pervasive can easily stack up and amplify into real pressure.

Perhaps this is one reason anonymity is important. The joke "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" can be interpreted to show that there are ways to balance the effect of privilege by just taking it [0]. But in practice, you still need the basics like a computer, which is still outside the monetary ability or gumption for many (like going to a library and programming in 20 minute spurts). Normal levels of dedication wouldn't be enough for such individuals, though it likely is for the group privileged with a background like a white male (which usually has higher resources and better starting conditions). Notably not all who seem privileged are, but that's a similar problem, but in reverse; large flame wars happen when people attempt to qualify which is of a larger magnitude (I have no opinion other than it seems to exist sometimes).

There also seems to be pressure to not appear to be pushing into a privileged group. The individual may be ridiculed for their interest in hacking and such. But I don't really understand that kind of pettiness, other than it exists and I have no idea how to fix it.

Disclaimer: my opinions aren't likely valid, as I'm not really sure where my privilege starts and ends. I think I have a lot to start with, but I also worked hard to overcome some negative things, too. To me that's just life, but I suspect the ease with which I can say that without bitterness is perhaps a good indicator of what "privilege" is in the meta sense. I also am by no means a qualified feminist, merely someone confused and vaguely concerned that I may be doing wrong by someone else for some thoughtless, inconsiderate reason.

[0] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you're_a_dog

[baddox]

> So only feel guilt if you help reinforce the imbalance (like commenting on a girl programming, which carries an implication of noteworthiness (since it was noted) and thus perhaps surprise (which could imply by extension social wrongness)).

Why is it wrong to consider a girl programming to be noteworthy or surprising? If it's true that females are underrepresented in programming or technology careers, which is the whole point of most of this thread, then this reaction seems completely appropriate.

[esperluette]

It's okay to be privately surprised, as long as you think about WHY you're surprised (e.g. "girls don't code" vs. "there aren't as many women coders as you might expect given the # of women in the US"). The dick move is to belabor the point and treat the programming woman as a performing dog instead of a person.

Think of it this way: you meet a woman at a meetup about a technical topic, and you find you have projects/interests in common. If you spend the whole conversation interrogating her about how/why she learned to code, asking her questions about what her boyfriend/significant other/husband does or what he thinks about her coding, or asking for her "feminine opinion" on your consumer startup, you are a dick.

If you treat her as a PERSON, not a novelty, and talk about those interests that are relevant to the meetup, that's decent behavior.

It's about the coding, not the gender (stupid).

[baddox]

> The dick move is to belabor the point and treat the programming woman as a performing dog instead of a person.

Sure, but that's basically saying that "being a dick is being a dick." You could also be a dick by treating a world-class athlete as a performing dog. You can be a dick about anything, regardless of how unoffensive that thing is on its own. But that's not what the original statement was talking about. It explicitly said that considering it noteworthy or surprising is inherently bad.

[HCIdivision17]

Yeah, I was wrong in the severity of the statement. What I can say that it could offend, since it has (at least for me). As always, you may be sufficiently tactful in person to avoid the whole issue.

[aredridel]

Yeah. unfortunately, people are DICKS a lot. That's what we're trying to fix.

[aredridel]

THIS.

[HCIdivision17]

Hey, turns out there's a much better written sub-thread above started by jfarmer (which is a lifesaver, as I'm not socially sophisticated enough to go deeper).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6977836

My example you quoted was an example of how a comment could unintentionally go sour; I think the term is triggering. But you're right - there's nothing wrong with noticing. Making an uncomfortable point of it is wrong-ish; making an encouraging point of it could very well be good.

Many of the suggestions cover helping clandestinely: the article notes providing effort to help move along applications to YC for women. I would assume pains would be taken to not make the women applying feel like they are being given application assistance due to incompetence, but rather simply as a way of accelerating their application out of eagerness and support, merely greasing the bureaucracy's wheels, if you will. (Though I should note that it's likely impolite to even mention misconstruing it that way - but I prefer games of perfect information and I don't think it should be offensive to talk about failure modes of social plans.) Hackers generally don't like creating special cases, so this may seem inelegant, but life's pretty inelegant socially, so such a suggestion is likely a pragmatic concession as a positive means to an end.

Given my lack of many social graces, I err on the side of hastily qualified awkward corrections. YMMV!

[jacalata]

There's nothing wrong with noticing. However, pulling from some personal experiences: you should refrain from highlighting that you noticed by saying "oh, you're not a guy!" or "are you really x?" or "I was expecting a guy!"

[rayiner]

One thing I think is problemetic in the tech community is the failure to separate the profession itself from unrelated cultural aspects of the people in the profession. The industry has trouble conceiving of what makes an excellent programmer except by reference to the characteristics of existing programmers. But there is no objective insight into the probitivity of these characteristics. Nobody really can measure how much programming for fun or by 13 really matters. This leads to a lot of cargo culting ("don't hire anyone without a github!") and deempahsises training people who have aptitude but don't have the same characteristics as other programmers. This is closely related to your point about privilege. Because the industry doesn't have objective ways to evaluate programmers, it over-relies on heuristics and cultural traits that favor people who "fit the mold." The Asian guy who programs for fun gets the opportunity, while the gal who could be an excellent programmer with proper training never gets steered toward the industry.

[Crito]

This is a topic that interests me, since I have not typically fallen in line with many of the "nerd/geek" lifestyle stereotypes (I don't game, watch animated movies, collect figurines or collect comic books... that sort of stuff. Instead I like going to sports bars, weightlifting, and reading sci-fi (...whoops, I guess I do conform there)).

Nevertheless, in a way I still find myself subscribing to the idea that people in tech tend to fit these stereotypes. If I imagine a hypothetical group of [company name here] devs, I imagine them as all anime-watching gamer bros. On the other hand, when I actually encounter any particular developer, it would surprise me more to learn that they are an anime-watching gamer than it would to learn that they are not. I somehow picture groups of people to be members of a cultural group that I consider to be a minority.

I think this apparent contradiction might be caused by a discrepancy with how tech professionals are portrayed in media (as anime-watching gamer bros) with how they actually tend to appear when I meet them in person ('normal' yuppies, often young parents or 'DINKs', with a wide variety of hobbies and interests).

[rayiner]

This article on the Space Shuttle software team is a wonderful contrast to the stereotypes (often valid) of people who work in Silicon Valley: http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff. I think the contrast between the team described in the article (older, mix gender, often married with kids), and the roomful of young men who coded in high school is extremely relevant to this issue.

[harryh]

> Because the industry doesn't have objective ways to

> evaluate programmers, it over-relies on heuristics and

> cultural traits that favor people who "fit the mold."

I think this is mostly wrong. It's hard to objectively evaluate many professions. How do you evaluate marketing professionals, or lawyers, or graphic designers? It's all fuzzy. And it's especially fuzzy for 22 years olds without a track record of experience to look at. I don't think that software companies do it much differently than anyone else when it comes to hiring. We base decisions on gateways like prestigious degrees. We look at whatever experience we can (even if it's just a github repo). And we conduct interviews where we do our best to ask real world questions.

Is this process perfect? Of course not. But is it pretty good? I think so. It's obvious who the great programmers are. It's obvious which ones are awful. And there's a mushy middle where it's hard to tell who's gonna work out and who isn't. I suspect that most other fields are about the same in this respect.

[rayiner]

I don't know anything about graphic design, but the marketing and legal fields approach recruiting differently, at least at the entry level. Companies hire people that they think can be trained, and train them using the extensive institutional knowledge companies hold and pass on internally. There's no belief that say the best marketing folks were the ones doing neighborhood projects as teenagers. Marketing folks usually are subject to very intensive internships or entry level jobs that teach them everything they need to know. The prevailing model in law or banking or consulting or accounting is to take people with aptitude and train them to do things "the firm's way."

There's a lot more similarity at the level of experienced hiring obviously. And this model of hiring is expensive. But it also has benefits. Firms create new professionals from raw materials. They don't have to wait for trained professionals to walk in the door.

[harryh]

Your comment really had two separate points one around training practices and another around hiring standards and occasional cargo culting. It was only the latter that I was objecting to.

It's interesting to think about the first point though. Why are training practices different in software? I can think of a couple of hypotheses:

A) Programming is one of few fields where it's possible to self train. B) Programming is a relatively young field that hasn't matured enough to develop rigorous training practices. C) Software companies aren't profitable enough to support expensive training programs. D) Training of programmers is a relatively futile endeavor as most programming success will come from innate talent that is either present or not in any given individual.

Just off the top of my head I put the most weight on A and C (especially for startups) though I'm fairly uncertain. There might also be other reasons I haven't thought of.

[kyro]

I didn't find his comments sexist in the least. If anything, they were almost purely observational, and I tend to agree with him. But they were also quite discouraging in regards to picking up programming later in life and how it correlated with success. As someone who was interested in computers at 13, but never had the opportunities or support to pursue that interest until much, much later in life, it's a bit sad to be told that it may be too late. To deliver that message when referring to an entire gender, I can imagine, can be doubly as discouraging.

[mercer]

I feel this is an inherent risk of 'observational' statements, and perhaps a risk taken disproportionately by the more 'geek' types.

It happens so often that I will make an observational statement that is interpreted as a value judgment, that I've started avoiding it. Because even if I carefully point out that it is an observation, and even point out that my observation might be wrong, it often results in a discussion that I didn't want to start.

I've noticed this disconnect especially often with my more artistic friends. It's like they can't discern a statement from an opinion. They also tend to have an intense hatred for any statement that aggregates, preferring to stick to direct observation, but that's another story.

[Caligula]

"The existence of privilege is not a scarlet letter on young white dudes who code. But the forceful, repeated, insidious denial of the existence of that privilege is a problem: it reinforces the privilege and allows it to feed on itself."

Seriously what the fuck does this mean? These words try so hard to appear to be insightful but are utterly meaningless.

I lack the privilege of understanding this.

[jfarmer]

He's talking about the reflexive defensiveness many young dudes in the technology industry have when the topic of privilege is brought up. Often it's associated with a feeling of shame, as if the person using the word were trying to put a scarlet letter on the young dude's chest.

They fall prey to bad logic: "If privilege exists then I am a bad person. I am not a bad person. Therefore privilege does not exist." The problem is the first implication, that acknowledging one's privilege somehow makes one a bad person or that it is "bad" to be privileged.

The conclusion is worse than unsound, though, because it denies something which has a material impact on many people's lives.

His words are clear and concise, IMO.

[glenra]

If you think his quote is clear and concise, can you unpack it a bit? I find it opaque and confusing. Maybe focus on the part after the colon.

Suppose you accuse me of being a witch. I deny it. In response, you claim that my repeated, insidious denial of being a witch just reinforces my witchiness and allows it to feed on itself. do you see how you've just (a) changed the nature of the accusation in a way that makes it weird and meta, (b) unfairly rendered the attack unanswerable?

Or consider: "Only a witch denies being a witch - denying it just makes it worse! You have to first ADMIT you are a witch and come to terms with it. I admit I'm one and I struggle with it daily - so should you!"

[jfarmer]

You know your analogy is loaded and constructed in a way to make any rebuttal logically impossible. That's doesn't seem particularly sincere, especially given that the core element of what tptacek said was that one shouldn't feel ashamed to be privileged. It would be hard for me to think of a worse analogy, honestly, since it fails in the most single important dimension! There's also something poetic since claims of "witchery" are a centuries-old tool used to silence women.

The quality and provocative nature of your analogy not withstanding, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. The comment to which you're replying is my attempt to unpack it. What about my comment wasn't clear for you?

For example, I see in your intentionally provocative analogy the same mistaken logic I described, that somehow the existence of privilege and the idea that you are privileged in certain ways is equivalent to being a witch and therefore that being privileged makes you a "bad person." I spelled out how that's a mistake many people make when thinking about privilege and yet you seem to be making it in this very comment.

Anyhow, I'll try to illustrate why privilege is not a scarlet letter but denying it can make one complicit.

Here's a hilarious Louis CK skit on the subject of racial privilege: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4f9zR5yzY

"I'm white. Thank God for that shit, boy. That is a huge leg up, are you kidding me? I love being white, I really do. Seriously, if you're not white, this shit is thoroughly good. Let me be clear, by the way, I'm not saying that white people are better. I'm saying that being white is clearly better. Who could even argue? If it was an option, I would re-up every year!"

Here's a way in which I am privileged: I can spend $1000 on a pair of glasses I really like and not have to think twice — or even once — about it. I don't think this makes me a bad person for doing it, let alone being able to do it. Nevertheless, most people would not just balk at paying that much, but wouldn't even consider the idea. Growing up my family couldn't really afford glasses (or doctors visits or dentist visits or....), so the situation still feels really weird to me.

Here's another way: I will never have to so much as think about being stopped and frisked in NYC, unlike, say, Forest Whitaker (http://pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com/2013/02/16/forest-whit...).

Here's yet another way: if I'm in a room with a female engineer I know talking to two other men that neither of us know, I would bet hard money virtually all of the technical questions will be directed at me. At that moment I have a choice. I could answer those questions and go on my way. I could point out what's happening, perhaps by asking, "Why are you asking me all the questions? Tara is just as capable of answering them as I am." I could maybe take a more tactful middle-ground and say something like, "I'm not sure. You should ask Tara those questions — she's the expert." And so on.

I am not a bad person for benefitting from that privilege, but if I were to deny it I would be complicit in reinforcing those patterns of behavior, abuse, and oppression.

So, yeah, totally like being a witch! Good analogy!

I'll end with this: http://www.harkavagrant.com/?id=341

[glenra]

You say the "core element" is that one shouldn't feel ashamed to be privileged. Well, fine: one also shouldn't feel ashamed of being a witch! And why would one?

If I were a witch, I wouldn't be ashamed of it. I'd be proud of being a witch. There's nothing inherently wrong with being a witch - witches are cool. The fact remains that the claim "if you deny being an X, that REINFORCES X-ness and lets X feed upon itself" is toxic and ridiculous. And the main other assertion I could think of that had this bizarre characteristic besides privilege was "you're a witch!" (I suppose "you're a racist" also has that attribute, but I didn't want to go there. Can you think of others?) "Witch" accusations are great for our purposes because it really has no moral characteristic at all. We all know witches don't exist and can't exist and I assume we don't collectively subscribe to religions that are afraid of them (or even if we do, we know that that fear is silly), so it's safe to use them as an example.

So. With regard to any particular person, if they say "I'm not a witch" that MIGHT just mean they're not a witch or they don't regard themselves as one. And that's OKAY. Even if the claim is MISTAKEN and they actually ARE a witch, it's not the case that denying it is uniquely evil. When witch-hunters claim it is, they're wrong. Any person denying that THEY are X doesn't really say anything about whether X COULD exist generally.

> There's also something poetic since claims of "witchery" are a centuries-old tool used to silence women.

Similarly, claims of "privilege" appear to be a modern tool used to silence men. The core essence of privilege seems to be that you have it when a bunch of people (of the right sort) SAY you have it (whether you agree or not) and it's considered rude/offensive/impossible to deny it.

You said: > I'll try to illustrate why privilege is not a scarlet letter but denying it can make one complicit.

...but never did anything to illustrate why denying it "can make one complicit" - you merely asserted this. So I assert the contrary: there is nothing wrong with simply being colorblind, gender-blind, every-other-characteristic-blind and treating people as HUMAN BEINGS first and foremost. Overemphasizing race/gender/handicap is at least as big a potential problem as underemphasizing it. If you always bend over backwards to make sure Tara gets asked what you feel are the appropriate number of questions given her gender, that is patronizing to her. Simply treating her as an equal would be more respectful and productive. Why would you need awareness of "privilege" to pass questioners to the person in the room who is the most relevant expert?

Nobody denies that some people have more advantages than other people. The only thing we're denying is that having some random set of advantages invalidates your opinion. The difference between privilege (what we're arguing about) and advantage (what you just gave examples of) is that privilege has the immediate additional connotation "and therefore you should shut up because it's wrong for you to express views on this matter". If it didn't, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

BTW, Louis CK's routine is funny but he's wrong. (Which is part of what makes it funny.)

[erikpukinskis]

The irony is that there is an immense amount of money being left on the table by this whole "startup world" ignoring women and people of color.

[spindritf]

Is there? With so many people, including well-off, successful entrepreneurs like tptacek above complaining, somehow there's no one to step in? They could in one swoop contribute to fixing an injustice, receive acclaim and make money, yet no one does?

I don't buy it.

[lancewiggs]

Golden Seeds (1) is an Angel Group/ VC firm based in NYC focussing on female founders. They are, apparently, getting very strong returns. That's one, and I'm sure there are more.

(1) http://www.goldenseeds.com

[erikpukinskis]

No, it would be very difficult. But the money is there for those willing to put the effort in.

[baddox]

Why do you suppose there are no competitors happily collecting this money?

[temphn]

The fundamental upstream question here is whether men and women should show the exact same patterns of ability and interest given their measurably different organs, hormones, chromosomes, lifespans, physiology, and so on. Much of the rest of the body differs systematically, visibly, and predictably between genders; it is unlikely a priori that the brain would remain invariant. Here's the late Doreen Kimura of McGill and Simon Fraser on the topic:

http://www2.nau.edu/~bio372-c/class/behavior/sexdif1.htm

  Men and women display patterns of behavioral and cognitive 
  differences that reflect varying hormonal influences on 
  brain development

  By Doreen Kimura (May 13, 2002)

  Men and women differ not only in their physical attributes 
  and reproductive function but also in many other 
  characteristics, including the way they solve intellectual 
  problems. For the past few decades, it has been 
  ideologically fashionable to insist that these behavioral 
  differences are minimal and are the consequence of 
  variations in experience during development before and 
  after adolescence. Evidence accumulated more recently, 
  however, suggests that the effects of sex hormones on brain 
  organization occur so early in life that from the start the 
  environment is acting on differently wired brains in boys 
  and girls. Such effects make evaluating the role of 
  experience, independent of physiological predisposition, a 
  difficult if not dubious task. The biological bases of sex 
  differences in brain and behavior have become much better 
  known through increasing numbers of behavioral, 
  neurological and endocrinological studies.

  Sex differences in problem solving have been systematically 
  studied in adults in laboratory situations. On average, men 
  perform better than women at certain spatial tasks. In 
  particular, men seem to have an advantage in tests that 
  require the subject to imagine rotating an object or 
  manipulating it in some other way. They also outperform 
  women in mathematical reasoning tests and in navigating 
  their way through a route. Further, men exhibit more 
  accuracy in tests of target-directed motor skills--that is, 
  in guiding or intercepting projectiles.

  Women, on average, excel on tests that measure recall of 
  words and on tests that challenge the person to find words 
  that begin with a specific letter or fulfill some other 
  constraint. They also tend to be better than men at rapidly 
  identifying matching items and performing certain precision 
  manual tasks, such as placing pegs in designated holes on a 
  board.

A graphic accompanies the full article:

http://www2.nau.edu/~bio372-c/images/00018E9D-879D-1D06-8E49...

Here is Louann Brizendine of UCSF:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Female-Brain-Louann-Brizendine/dp/...

  Review 1: Louann Brizendine, a neuropsychiatrist at the 
  University of California, San Francisco, explores 
  groundbreaking issues in brain science...Brizendine 
  graduated from the Yale University School of Medicine and 
  draws on research done at the Women's and Teen Girls' Mood 
  and Hormone Clinic, which she founded at UCSF in 1994.

  Review 2 :This comprehensive new look at the hormonal 
  roller coaster  that rules women's lives down to the 
  cellular level, "a user's guide to new research about the 
  female brain and the neurobehavioral systems that make us 
  women," offers a trove of information, as well as some 
  stunning insights. Though referenced like a work of 
  research, Brizedine's writing style is fully accessible. 
  Brizendine provides a fascinating look at the life cycle of 
  the female brain from birth ("baby girls will connect 
  emotionally in ways that baby boys don't") to birthing 
  ("Motherhood changes you because it literally alters a 
  woman's brain-structurally, functionally, and in many ways, 
  irreversibly") to menopause (when "the female brain is   
  nowhere near ready to retire") and beyond.

There are tens of thousands of papers in this general area on Pubmed.

[aredridel]

Indeed. Any with conclusions that support dismissing women in tech?

[jdp23]

Well said.

[hacker789]

He's concerned about being misconstrued because feminist activists love bullying people with waves of hateful, outrageously uncharitable, deliberately damaging messages at the slightest trigger.

For example, here's what PG recently said on Twitter (https://twitter.com/paulg/status/416994260995416064):

> Will write about female founders, but traveling all day so it will have to wait. Reserve judgment? Prob too much to hope for, alas.

The responses are typical of feminist activists:

1. > pg translated: "Shut up. All I did in the last decade is not what I believe in, I will graciously explain it to you when I see fit"

2. > Obviously not an important enough issue to deal with now.

3. > please DO NOT write about women founders until you have a better fucking grasp on the issue.

4. > oh don't you even try to equate being a douchebag "startup" founder with being a hacker

The privilege topic has been discussed to death.

If someone were to use "privilege" to mean "unearned benefits for individuals in specific contexts", then no one could have a problem with it. We could talk about:

- female privileges in the workplace

- male privileges in the workplace

- white privileges at university

- black privileges at university

- gay privileges at bars

- straight privileges at bars

- American-born privileges regarding medical care

- Canadian-born privileges regarding medical care

- etc.

Instead, third-wave feminists have transformed the notion of "privilege" into a targeted weapon for belittling and denigrating the specific demographics they deem hostile to their goals.

When a "friendly" demographic does well, it's a result of hard work and determination. For example, when young women earn more than young men, or when young women graduate from college at far higher rates than young men, it's a result of hard work and determination.

Another example: Have you ever seen tptacek complain about the Asian tech problem, the Indian tech problem, or the Jewish tech problem? Nope. Those people worked hard! That is why they're wildly overrepresented. No need to scold them. No need to demand flagellation from them.

But men doing well? White men? Oh god, it's just their privilege. We need to fix this, and we'll know the problem isn't fixed as long as there is any disparity.

[aredridel]

A white man can be smart, kind, caring and sharing and have troubles of his own. But white MEN are privileged and you know it </meninblack>