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Is There an HN for Women?

36 points| ananiochita | 3 years ago | reply

Or a site like this one, lobsters, etc, with, if not a majority, at least a sizable community of women involved ?

I see it's been asked before what percentage of women might make up contributors here, with no clear answer. But it seems like there aren't many or they'd rather not make a point about it.

64 comments

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[+] merricksb|3 years ago|reply
Elpha is a discussion community for women in tech.

It was started by a female YC employee and she then left YC employment to run it full time, with YC funding it as part of their summer 2019 batch.

https://elpha.com

[+] iammjm|3 years ago|reply
How would an "HN for women" be different from this one?
[+] PurpleRamen|3 years ago|reply
Maybe different news. Definitely different vibes. The reaction here are all very uncomfortable again for manifold reasons. It's really no surprise this question was asked.
[+] desindol|3 years ago|reply
pink instead of orange /s?
[+] chesterbr|3 years ago|reply
Non-minority here. IMHO, the question is valid and should not be flagged. It’s ok to look for/ask about a version of it where a particular demographic feels more represented/included. That does not invalidate the site or the people who don’t belong to such groups, and having the question flagged so fast only raises suspicions over the alleged neutrality of the site regarding gender, etc.
[+] rich_sasha|3 years ago|reply
I'm of the general opinion that people should be free to make their own sub-communities, and even within reason restrict access to others. Say women in tech want a male-free space? Well fine.

The issue is, what then about "white men in tech"? Do they get to have a group to themselves, to discuss issues from, dunno, "dealing with tech Feminazis", or whatever white men in tech struggle with? What about white supremacists in tech? Elite SEs against influx of cheap junior labour?

I'm personally not a member of any such "selective" groups and for these reasons feel a bit ambivalent about them.

But as i say, go ahead as far as I'm concerned...

[+] badpun|3 years ago|reply
Is HN not for women? I think it's for everyone.
[+] mdrzn|3 years ago|reply
"Is there an HN for ***" would create uncountable subcultures and divisions which are definitely not needed.

Whatever you might be interested in discussing or reading here, I as a male might be interested in too.

[+] krapp|3 years ago|reply
People ask for "HN for **" all the time here, no one has a problem with it. There's one such thread making the rounds right now. Most HNers want this place to be for tech only and feel the quality of discourse is degraded by the introduction of non-technical issues. They're incorrect, but the trend to want "HN but for x" is common.

As far as wanting a platform for women specifically, that also seems understandable given how hostile the community here can be towards women and subjects that involve womens' issues. Just see some of the other responses here, or anything approaching certain social or "political" topics which some people, women in particular, might find relevant.

[+] sabertoothed|3 years ago|reply
Why does there need to be? HN is for anyone, no?
[+] hnbad|3 years ago|reply
HN is decidedly not "for anyone". It's an outgrowth of US tech VC culture and it has significant biases inherited from that (specifically a tech (right-)libertarian political leaning and an overrepresentation of white and Asian men from wealthy backgrounds).

It's literally the Paradox of Tolerance at play. Contrast Twitter with its "free speech alternatives" and then consider that Twitter is actually historically intentionally hands-off when it comes to content moderation.

I agree that an "HN for women" likely wouldn't solve any of these problems as by that description alone it sounds like the "girlboss feminism" equivalent and would likely inherit many of its problems. But I would also argue that if you try to distill the problematic aspects out of HN it ceases to be HN and you should really just ask about more inclusive tech news communities rather than a pinker version of the orange site.

[+] rrrt|3 years ago|reply
You could try Ovarit, it's one of the few exclusively women-centered forums out there. They have a STEM sub-forum if you're looking for tech topics in particular.
[+] NylaTheWolf|3 years ago|reply
Ovarit is a website run by former moderators of r/GenderCritical, a now-banned subreddit for "gender critical" people and TERFs.
[+] panic|3 years ago|reply
The fact that this question was instantly flagged off the front page says a lot about the HN readership in and of itself. OP, I'm not aware of such a site, but I'm sure many people would appreciate a place like that.
[+] ananiochita|3 years ago|reply
Thank you. Given some of the responses ( and direct accusations of "toxic genderbaiting", wanting to "split HN", etc. ) I will not comment or participate at all, simply afraid.

I regret having asked now.

[+] theelous3|3 years ago|reply
It's probably being flagged because it's toxic genderbaiting in a place that has a healthy disregard for gender in the first place.
[+] rizach8|3 years ago|reply
I have never thought about the gender of a single user on this site, ever.
[+] hnbad|3 years ago|reply
I have almost never thought about the gender of a single user on this site either. That's because I assume they're a white guy like me until indicated otherwise. That's because most of the people I see in most tech spaces are white guys like me, so I'm probably right (and when I'm not it's usually because they're a Asian rather than white).

That's what it's like to be the default character model. That's not what it's like not being that.

Heck, for the longest time as a white guy in tech I thought simply treating people who aren't white guys as if they were was good enough. That only changed when I listened to a woman talk about her experience of being on the receiving end of that, with her colleagues being so comfortable treating her as "one of the boys" that they'd openly be misogynist about other women in her presence ("but you're not like them of course").

Not being the default character model sucks. Having a community with a default character model closer to your own is an improvement. Of course even better still would be not having any single default character model but "pink HN" might still be better than nothing.

[+] badpun|3 years ago|reply
I made a comment asking "Is HN not for women? I think it's for everyone." a couple hours ago. It got +7 karma since. And yet, it's now not shown (it's folded) by default. It never happened to be before on HN. Can someone explain what feature is this?

BTW I see that it happened to majority of comments. What the heck is going on here?

[+] Udo|3 years ago|reply
If women feel HN is not currently for them, the questions would be: why not and what can we do to remedy that? Percentage of contributors is a problematic benchmark here, because the industry as a whole has a very depressing gender split. If you're put off by the conservatism often on display here, the solution is not to leave and look elsewhere - the solution would be more engagement and show of presence.
[+] hnbad|3 years ago|reply
Why should women do the work of making HN more attractive to women if they could just go elsewhere where they don't have to fight an uphill battle against an entrenched gender bias (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32549264)?

Therapy is useless if you're not willing to change. HN doesn't actually show any indication of willigness to change, quite the opposite actually. If how HN is is what's keeping women out, all you're asking of women is to grit their teeth and endure it.

[+] mariusor|3 years ago|reply
I personally don't think gender segregation should have a place in tech discussions, or any discussion in general, as long as conversation is held in good faith and in a respectful manner.

However for the people that do want it, I think that they need to look further than HN. By its centralized nature HN will guarantee that the over represented voices will drown everyone else.

The only way I see this kind of an effort gathering steam is by using one of the discussion platforms coming from the ActivityPub community as a starting point, but unfortunately that brings all the problems of building a community from scratch to the surface. Even if the community would be connected to the greater mass of the fediverse, it would still require a lot of effort to gather mind share. :(

But I would still be interested in seeing such an effort take root. (And to toot my own horn, I do happen to have a project that can be used for this purpose; details in my bio, anyone feel free to reach out.)

[+] PurpleRamen|3 years ago|reply
> I personally don't think gender segregation should have a place in tech discussions, or any discussion in general,

Segregation happens naturally in any human society. It's not something we can avoid. Though, there are supporting elements, and in that regard this site is quite good, as there is not much infrastructure to support community-building here.

> as long as conversation is held in good faith and in a respectful manner.

It's not that simple. Even with good faith and respect can you create an unattractive environment for someone, without being guilty of it. And it's not like discussions here are all in good faith and absolut respectful. Tone and messages here can be very harsh, just with less swearings.

[+] LatteLazy|3 years ago|reply
If you want something with specifically Female orientated content try

https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/

otherwise, HN is pretty neutral on gender...

[+] panic|3 years ago|reply
TwoXChromosomes isn't a tech community in the same category as HN and lobste.rs.
[+] unpopularopp|3 years ago|reply
How would you verify someone is a women? What does a women mean in this context?