> In fact, the original commenter could be seen as being more fair by simply stating that gender shouldn't matter.
We don't live in a vacuum, so even if we feel that gender shouldn't matter it already does in fundamental ways.
> At the same time, you're looking at one statistic. The race or religion of project contributors could be looked at, but they aren't because IT IS NOT IMPORTANT.
Actually this is really important. If projects are systematically excluding people of certain races or religions, we have a discrimination problem.
> For some reason, this topic has been rehashed so many times on HN and each time someone tries to look at the argument from a gender-less perspective, people like you -- jacobian -- jump out from the bushes to make statements, charging dissenters with misogyny.
Nobody called anyone a misogynist in this discussion.
> Projects can maintain fairness without specifically targeting a demographic, they need only be open to everyone and never turn someone down simply because of an attribute they cannot change [gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, height, etc].
This is absolutely true. However, why there aren't more women in tech isn't just about project maintainers. Women in general are not going into or are finding spaces in which they can participate as developers and programmers. This is the whole point of this particular RailsBridge workshop.
This is a minor nitpick, but I'll bite. I realize nobody explicitly called anyone a mysogynist, but neither did I. There is a difference between saying someone is mysogynist the adjective and mysogyny the noun. jacobian inferred that because the OP doesn't care about diversity then he doesn't care about fairness. That is tantamount to charging someone with sexual discrimination, also known as mysogyny.
[Edit: I upvoted king_jester because, regardless of whether I agree with him on all points, his reply was concise, helpful and he wasn't being a dick]
> jacobian inferred that because the OP doesn't care about diversity then he doesn't care about fairness. That is tantamount to charging someone with sexual discrimination, also known as mysogyny.
Really it's not. There's a big difference between active discrimination and just not caring. I said that my guess is that icedancer doesn't see lack of diversity as a moral problem, not that s/he is a engaging in discrimination. Accusing me of "jumping out of the bushes" to "attack dissenters" is really unfair. Look, I appreciate that some people don't see lack gender diversity as a problem. I disagree, but I'm never going to convince those people to see the issue in my terms. I hope you'll re-read my comment and try to assume just a tiny bit of good faith on my part.
We don't live in a vacuum, so even if we feel that gender shouldn't matter it already does in fundamental ways.
> At the same time, you're looking at one statistic. The race or religion of project contributors could be looked at, but they aren't because IT IS NOT IMPORTANT.
Actually this is really important. If projects are systematically excluding people of certain races or religions, we have a discrimination problem.
> For some reason, this topic has been rehashed so many times on HN and each time someone tries to look at the argument from a gender-less perspective, people like you -- jacobian -- jump out from the bushes to make statements, charging dissenters with misogyny.
Nobody called anyone a misogynist in this discussion.
> Projects can maintain fairness without specifically targeting a demographic, they need only be open to everyone and never turn someone down simply because of an attribute they cannot change [gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, height, etc].
This is absolutely true. However, why there aren't more women in tech isn't just about project maintainers. Women in general are not going into or are finding spaces in which they can participate as developers and programmers. This is the whole point of this particular RailsBridge workshop.