Start with a young woman who's already formed her identity. 
  Dump her in a situation that operates on different social 
  scripts than she's accustomed to, full of people talking 
  about a subject she doesn't yet understand. Then tell her 
  the community is hostile toward women and therefore doesn't 
  have enough of them, all while showing her off like a prize 
  poodle so you can feel good about recruiting a female. 
  This is a recipe for failure.

On the one hand the stream-of-consciousness rantyness so accurately describes what's actually going on and it's beautiful to see it written down so poignantly.

On the other hand it has a pretty strong "I got mine" component to it, where she laments the negative effects these changes have had on her personally but doesn't acknowledge that while she's in a position she likes that doesn't at all mean it is, or would be, like that for many others.

The risk here is that sexism often manifests itself as 'all good until it's not,' in that the small things are always easily brushed off and if you're lucky to run in circles where you don't experience the bad stuff you tend to think it's all way overblown... until you get to a point where something happens that can't be brushed off and you realize you aren't actually as supported as you thought you were, at which point all minor transgressions are no longer just brushed off but are rather interpreted as 'still a transgression, even if only minor.'

I came to the Open Source world because I liked being part of a community where my ideas, my skills and my experience mattered, not my boobs. That's changed, and it's changed at the hands of the people who say they want a community where ideas, skills and experience matter more than boobs.

I don't at all see her failing to acknowledge that she was fortunate--she had that community, at least for a while, and she explicitly says that others who came later did not. And she makes a number of good practical suggestions for improving the situation.

Ironically, this means in many ways doing the opposite of what many of the people calling themselves feminists demand.

For a very large amount of women that is unfortunately not the case nowadays and unfortunately her situation is not typical in the slightest and I didn't see much actionable advice to improve on that.

It's also important to note that it seems the people she respected are separated from today's youth by almost two generations:

  I've never had a problem with old-school hackers. These guys 
  treat me like one of them, rather than "the woman in the group", 
  and many are old enough to remember when they worked on teams 
  that were about one third women, and no one thought that strange. 
  Of course, the key word here is "old" (sorry guys). Most of the 
  programmers I like are closer to my father's age than mine.

Where we would go wrong is if we took this as the right approach, if we started basing best practices from this or worse: if we would use it to belittle the work of everyone who is trying to improve the situation.

Exactly: it isn't the case now, but it was the case before. Why is that?

if we would use it to belittle the work of everyone who is trying to improve the situation

But the whole point is that "trying to improve the situation" by making a huge fuss about "women in tech" is counterproductive; it makes the situation worse, not better.

To the extent that there is a "right" approach, IMO it is to not fuss about anything except what each individual child is interested in. The moment you start thinking "I want more girls to do X" or "I think more boys should do Y", you've already gone wrong. Thinking of people as members of groups instead of unique individuals is what caused the problem in the first place; that kind of thinking is not going to fix it.

I don't know; but I do know it's been like that way before the recent fuss about women in tech got started.

> To the extent that there is a "right" approach .. what each individual child is interested in.

Practically speaking then, do you think we would improve the situation in tech if we told everyone who's organizing these events which do explicitly mention gender to stop doing so?

From an idealistic perspective I'm also against women-only events and would prefer them to be perfectly inclusive.

In practice that's a very hard thing to achieve though and if supplanting existing classes with predominantly boys with an explicit girls-only class helps to get some of these girls interested in tech then I'm not one to rain on their parade.

Well, it might have something to do with the huge emphasis on judging people based on their gender that the feminists and sjws have been shoving down everyone's throats lately.

Seriously, she doesn't like the increasing number of women only events because they make it harder for women (at all stages of their careers) to be accepted like everyone else. Surprise, emphasizing someone's gender as the most important thing about you makes people more likely to treat you differently because of it.

I'm part of the younger generation, and I feel exactly the same way she does. These sexist policies are making my life WAY more difficult. I'm jealous of people who got to experience tech before it got popular enough to become a target for feminists.

>You do not represent all women in technology. You get to represent yourself.

Any given feminist will happily claim to be the voice of all women everywhere. It's only when a woman disagrees with their dogma that a woman is only allowed to speak for herself.

And I feel sorry for you for that. It's always painful when a subculture you feel at home in enters common culture and moves itself out of your comfort zone in the process. I'd feel even more sorry for you though if your sphere of empathy wouldn't ever expand to include the more feminine geeks that currently don't feel welcome in our industry.

The author of the story wrote this from a good heart and a desire to say the right thing and get people to skip all those frustrating awkward stages in between but unfortunately I'd say that is as useful telling someone who's stressed to just relax: it might even work for some people but if you really care about the outcome relying only on this tactic leaves a lot of room for improvement.

That's why I will continue to do what I feel is best to make our industry more inclusive. The simple fact that we're having this discussion here is made possible by people like me who've repeatedly criticized pg for letting gender issue stories be flagged off the front page so easily and I'm grateful for having played a small part in that small change.

As a genderfluid person from the same generation as the author it's truly a breath of fresh air for me to see thoughts and perspectives I've always had discussed out in the open. I for one feel more at home in the industry already through this all. If it's like that for me, someone who can at least always choose to pass as male, then I'm sure many women feel the same and as far as I'm concerned that's a good thing worth fighting for.

And yes, I acknowledge that will make things harder for you, the author and her son. I believe though that an industry where everyone feels welcome regardless of gender, which just isn't the case right now and hasn't been for a long time, will be worth every ounce of sacrifice it takes.

> Any given feminist will happily claim to be the voice of all women everywhere.

That's a rather dubiously broad statement; but if that happens then call them out on it. Improve the discourse. Ask them if they want to feel the pressure of having their every action represent their entire gender. If they say no then remind them they shouldn't be speaking for their entire gender either.

These special ed for women programming events are harmful to all women, not just women who already program. You can't de-emphasize gender by putting more emphasis on it...

I do believe however that it's completely and utterly impossible to improve gender dynamics without putting emphasis on it.

Using the (un)conscious (in)competence learning model [1] as a reference what you're saying is essentially that we should just go from unconscious incompetence straight to unconscious competence without doing that whole 'conscious' step, but that's just not a realistic option.

To achieve mastery or improvement in anything it needs to, at least temporarily, become conscious.

And yes, that will indeed be uncomfortable at first, but I really don't believe we can get there without it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence

Well, it's pretty much a given that they're increasing sex based discrimination in the world. Both as a primary effect ("we only take people with vaginas") as well as a significant secondary effect ("wait, so I can't go because I'm a boy?").

>I do believe however that it's completely and utterly impossible to improve gender dynamics without putting emphasis on it.

It's a free country, so you're free to believe that. Just acknowledge that you're an advocate for sex-based discrimination. Incidentally, this makes you a sexist.

Given that sexist isn't a binary thing I'm perfectly willing to concede that to some degree and in some ways I am indeed a sexist.

Heck, I'm bisexual and to some degree I'm a homophobe. I don't like it, I'm not proud of it, it definitely doesn't work in my favour and I'm actively working on it, but I still am.

And so are you and that's OK. As long as bit by bit we're all getting better.

Unfortunate that such an online article could only have been written by a woman, as the likelihood of being on the receiving end of outrage is too high had it come from a man.

And yes, looks like it will take after Tasha Yar, and die repeatedly.