Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by ignorance.
I know it bothers minorities -- and I understand why, since I am a "minority" on HN (woman, nearly 50yo, writer with only minor coding skills, etc) -- but most people who aren't part of that particular minority say "exclusionary" things mostly out of ignorance, not as some kind of dog-whistle fuck-you policy to specifically keep X people out.
Female only is not transphobic and is not excluding transwomen.
Op is downvoted not because they have correctly identified transphobia and HN is full of bigots (although it is) but because OP has leapt to an unsupported assumption. There is nothing transphobic about the submitted link.
Edit: also, as far as I can tell op only got one or two downvotes, and so if they are being heavily downvoted they're also being up voted too.
Generally sex is what you were born as, you were born as either male or female.
Gender is what you identify as, you either identify as man or woman.
Now it is clear that PG and company aren't transphobic, but by giving in to the first demand for more representation of "minorities" (as if asians, immigrants and indians weren't minorities and weren't already statistically over representated) they have given the SJW a finger and when you give the devil a finger...
Personally I am going to get some popcorn and watch this drama unfold.
This distinction between sex and gender is a common use of those two terms (at least in particular contexts) but the idea that "man" and "woman" identify genders and "male" and "female" identify sexes is much less common. More commonly, "male" and "female" are adjectives pertaining either to sex or gender and "man" and "woman" are mind referring to adults who are, respectively, male and female, again, either by sex or gender.
That's just a question of words and their definitions.
Personally, I use both woman and female completely the same, and sometimes it means women and trans-women (e.g. when I see someone who looks typically female), but mostly it means born women only (e.g. when I say I'm attracted to women).
But of course, not everyone uses the same words with the same meaning. There's no need to assume bad faith.
Words and their definitions are pretty much what society is built on and it's useful to have words mean different things since it is what allows us to express so many different ideas -1984 famously destroyed the vocabulary of society expressly so that only the correct ideas could be considered.
Without a difference in meaning, why have different words? It seems preposterous to extend the English language just to play scrabble.
Right, but the original meaning of "woman" is "a female human", whereas "female" is an adjective or a noun for one of the biological sexes (the one that produces ova in sexual reproduction). Including trans-women in the definition of "woman" is a modernistic redefinition of the word, so people are totally justified if they use the word with its original meaning. Maybe we should make up a new word for the new meaning?
That might have been a sensible choice about twenty years ago. As it is the other usage seems to have been established too much now. This isn't anything new, words change meaning and tone all the time.
I think that only 10% of English speakers think trans-Women are actually women. However that 10% are disproportionately powerful, so they are able to control how the word is used in the media, in the workplace, and in educational institutions. If they stopped doing this, usage would revert to its original pretty much instantaneously.
When you are with your doctor there is a distinction between the two, but in general vernacular "female" is simply an adjective for "woman." They both mean the same thing, they just two different word types.
For example, in this case "Female Founders Conference" is the exact equivalence of "Founders Conference of people who are women."
And was possibly chosen in part because Female and Founders both start with F. That sort of thing is really not at all uncommon. People often consider how things flow when choosing a name.
The 'normal conference' (aka Startup School) does admit women.
I was admitted last year but couldn't attend. This event supports and encourages a community.
This will be my second and there isn't an event I went to last year (when I was starting my first company) that was more productive or helpful, including several I paid a lot of $$ for (this is also a free conference).
One of the biggest issues women face is that most men will not talk to them unless they are hoping to bed them. Men sometimes do this out of the best of intentions -- not wanting a woman to think he is hitting on her or not wanting anyone to think there is an affair because he is "friendly" with her -- but it is a very serious obstacle to women being able to network and actually have meaty discussions of business. It's also generally helpful for minorities to see examples of someone "like them" in some important way who has done the thing they inspire to. One of the benefits of that is to see an example of what works, even if you don't know the right questions to ask about "what do I need to do differently to be successful at this, in spite of the fact that people like me are so seldom successful at this?" It can be helpful to see those examples even in cases where you do not think too deeply about what they are doing differently from others "like them." It can just give you a glimpse of a pattern you haven't seen before that you can emulate without fully analyzing.
I do what I can to make it possible for women to participate more equally on HN. I am sort of appalled that Jessica Livingston, the sole female among the YC founders and a presenter at this conference, does not see fit to participate more in discussion here. I think her absence on the forum is one of the reasons it is such a boyzone. But I am glad to see YC doing something to try to support women founders, even though I tend to be much more interested in finding a means to be inclusive of women in the "boys club" rather than in trying to segregate them. Nonetheless, segregation for women to help them get started seems to have a track record of success. From what I gather, women-only colleges have a decent track record of producing female leadership and female coding groups appear to also help women break in. So unless I can offer something definitively more effective and also ideologically more palatable, I see no reason to tear it down with criticism.
The ones that might interest you most are The Gray Zone, Oh My God It's a Girl! and Glass Walls.
I also put some of the responsibility on women, which gets me into endless hot water and accused of "victim blaming." The post Nothing But a Bunch of Boobs takes that angle (but, then, so does Oh My God It's A Girl!, but it is a tad less controversial).
Firsthand personal experience as a woman, plus observation of the world around me, including reading what other women write, many of whom are extremely angry about how men interact with them.
I am sorry but that sounds like an echochamber effect. It does not mirror my experiences at all which consist of mostly the same. Personal experiences are not a measure for all society.
That cuts both ways: Your personal experiences do not dismiss the widespread experiences of a great many women.
If it isn't an issue for you, then you may be a statistical outlier. It seems to be a pretty typical experience for most women -- not all, of course, but it appears to be quite common. Even female founders* sometimes talk about the degree to which they have been treated like nothing but a piece of ass by men they were trying to make deals with, an issue men do not typically have to face when they are trying to launch a business.
Meanwhile nobody still gives a shit about the way women treat men, or men's "lived experiences". You complain, people listen. We complain, we are told to suck it up.
For some reason, "observant" women keep denying it though.
No but you've pulled this exact same "do you know who I am???" spiel before. I remember the account name. Didn't care then either.
Hint: if you were relevant, you wouldn't need to remind people. And if you weren't stuck up, you'd have made a point here instead of acting sanctimonious.
That piece made the front page, so I suspect some folks here have context as to what I mean: That women have trouble getting men to engage them in a meaty way. Many men err on the side of caution, as I stated above. Heterosexual men have a tendency to engage women only superficially, unless they are looking for a romantic relationship. No, not all men do that. But a high percentage seem to and it's problematic.
I regret that it was probably not the best way to express it, but I'm not sure there is a good way to say it in brief.
Well, I see two things at play here. One, there could be a subset of topics which are by the nature of things of interest to women in particular, so they can dive into these kinds of things from a woman's perspective.
To add to the above, it somewhat, superficially at least, frees women from men's ideology. But again, exposing gender antagonism.
Two, it is what people expect, in a way, so why not take this as a marketing differentiator? Perception can matter more than reality. Basically exploiting 'gender antagonism', as it were. This is a prototypical Lacanian symptom.
I see two flagkilled top level comments and I assume they are saying "why do we need .... just for women". I assume that the flaggers believe that this issue has already been resolved, and debating this distracts from the real issues, and therefore should be discouraged.
On the other hand, I recall that a story about sexism in tech was flagkilled, only to be revived by the moderators. In this case I assume that the flaggers believed that the issue of sexism in tech has already been shown to be exaggerated, and flooding HN with articles like this only distracts from other interesting topics.
So my question is: are the moderators willing to be explicit about their role in guiding the debate on HN on these issues. That is, are they willing to admit that there is not consensus among HN posters on the importance of sexism in tech, or encouraging women to work in the industry, but that the moderators themselves have taken a side on this issue and want to enforce it on HN debates?
