I'm divorced. During my divorce I intentionally scrubbed my casual conversation of all personal details about my future ex because if I mentioned his hair color, men with that hair color would act like "I'm in like Flynn!" and men with other hair colors would act like kicked puppies, as if I had just buttonholed them, called them by name and said "Fuck you in particular. I will NEVER date you!"
To me it always looked amazingly stupid. As someone once said to me "Why not assume the opposite? She's DIVORCING (guy with that hair color)! She'll never want a man with that hair color AGAIN! She HATES (that hair color)!"
After scrubbing my language of ALL personal details about any guy I ever had any romantic connection to no matter how slight, I got more satisfactory results. Men no longer prescreened themselves based on incredibly unimportant details like hair color. They had to really talk to me and get to know me and I was much happier with how that went.
Lesson learned: If (stupid, tiny detail) is the ONLY thing someone knows about you pertinent to their interactions with you, it will loom large in their minds and substantially shape their interactions with you.
No, it won't help to whine and cry about how it's a stupid, insignificant detail that shouldn't fucking matter and you are appalled anyone would give it that much weight.
Men probably do that because men get raised to have "public lives" (as defined by me on this site: AKA careers), so it's common for men to be very picky about what personal information they share in casual conversation. Because they already know that's how that works.
So when a woman divulges details like that "to" them -- even if it's in a group conversation, not one-on-one privately -- they think that's significant information she WANTS them to have. Ergo she must be inviting romantic overtures.
Probably a lot of sexual harassment is rooted in women doing what I used to do, men interpreting it as if it's something it's absolutely not and the two of them continuing to miscommunicate train-wreck style for as long as they know each other because neither of them ever figures it the fuck out.
Men seem to never conclude "Women just talk that way. It's not a secret coded message for me in specific." and women who aren't me seem to never conclude "Ah, I shouldn't do that. Male experience inclines them to wildly misinterpret my actions when I do that."
But I'm a woman. I didn't initially know that.
I had to figure it out because I had a very private life, so I assume you need a lot more information about me to draw conclusions about whether or not you would want to date me. I would never hit on anyone based on one stupid detail of that sort, so I was initially floored and flabbergasted that anyone would do something that looks so amazingly stupid to me.
But I'm the pragmatic sort, so rather than keep doing what I had always done and then pissing and moaning about how MALE behavior is the problem, I modified MY behavior. Because MY behavior is the thing I have some control over.
And I think the above pattern of miscommunication or interpersonal friction due to miscommunication between men and women is a root cause of The Glass Ceiling.
What makes a former homemaker who spent more time homeless than trying to climb the corporate ladder imagine she knows something about breaking the glass ceiling?
As best I can tell, I appear to be the highest ranked woman on Hacker News and probably the only woman to have ever made the leaderboard of Hacker News. And I've done it in part by doing my damnedest to not be offensive a la my understanding that French language Bibles say "The nonchalant shall inherit the earth" rather than "The meek shall inherit the earth."
What does that mean?
Most people seem to think nonchalant means casual. In fact, this is the top result when I search it online:
(of a person or manner) feeling or appearing casually calm and relaxed; not displaying anxiety, interest, or enthusiasm:"she gave a nonchalant shrug"
I always took it to mean nonconfrontational or not challenging. I'm technically wrong about the word origin but I think that's not terribly important.
The opposite of nonchalance would be to be strongly invested in the outcome, to make it "a hill to die on." AKA confrontational.
I was always calm, relaxed and casual about my interactions with Hacker News because I'm not a feminist and didn't join to make some point about including women.
I joined in hopes of learning to code and can prove that. THIS is my very first post there, posted the same day I joined.
Fifteen years later, I still haven't learned to code. Perhaps that's one part gender issues making it challenging and perhaps not. I can reasonably chalk up any and all failures in my life to my medical situation.
When I joined, a good faith estimate is that Hacker News was roughly 98 percent male. And rest assured my gender has absolutely been a source of friction on the site and a factor in my failure to get various things I've wanted out of it, one I'm often very aggravated about.
At one time, the top three slots on the leaderboard all had roughly the same amount of karma and the three people occupying them would periodically swap places. That changed after I left this comment.
Thereafter, Thomas became the top ranked member on the leaderboard by a country mile and no one can catch him. No, he's NEVER done a FUCKING thing for ME.
Pretty sure if I were male that would be a case of "I scratch your back, you scratch mine." But he's a misogynistic heathen whose first company succeeded because his WIFE'S tech career provided the insurance coverage he couldn't otherwise afford.
Nonetheless, he acts like OTHER men are sexist pigs and THAT hurt her career. No, honey, your sexist pig husband hurt your career. Look how he treats ME.
This video is wonderfully informative. The guy speaking and juggling is named Colin Wright and I knew him via Hacker News.
No, contrary to the date stamp on his profile, he didn't join Hacker News AFTER me. His other handle is RiderOfGiraffes.
His real name handle is currently number 12 on the leaderboard. He has a PhD in math and is one of the more polite, well behaved members of Hacker News.
I originally looked up that video because he's high on the leaderboard and very respected and I was having friction with him, so I was trying to find information about him that would help me interact more effectively with him on Hacker News.
I was homeless at the time and I was a math geek myself in my youth. His above linked video became "my bedtime reading" every night for some weeks and we began exchanging emails periodically, like once every six weeks or so.
That helped saved my sanity while I was homeless, so I was enormously grateful for those email exchanges but we eventually had a falling out over which I remain deeply bitter, may he burn in hell.
In the course of exchanging emails, I gave him feedback on his website. He later indicated he incorporated a lot of my suggestions and he was doing a lot more speaking on math as a result of it.
His math talks were basically the eccentric hobby of an obscenely wealthy man who doesn't need to work for a living and most likely inherited his money. At the time, he listed no prices on the site, though he does currently with language alluding to the fact that this wasn't always so.
No, he never told me he's obscenely wealthy. Among other things which caused me to infer he's quite wealthy, he has said publicly that his nickname RiderOfGiraffes is based on the fact that he actually owns a giraffe and rides it.
I'm guessing he wasn't followed home by a stray giraffe baby and didn't keep it in a shoebox in a corner of his apartment, feeding it table scraps. Pretty sure that's the hobby of an obscenely wealthy man.
But maybe I'm wrong.
Anyway, his website documents that he gives a lot more talks than he used to and now charges a reasonable sum for it. I was homeless when I gave him the feedback on the site that apparently led to that outcome and he's never once given me one thin dime nor told other people "You should hire her. She's talented."
Patrick McKenzie is one of the three guys that used to be neck and neck at the top of the leaderboard. Like Thomas, his profile has long said -- or used to say -- "Email me! I would love to hear from you!
Unlike Thomas, Patrick actually replied to my email when I emailed him. I guess Thomas didn't think he needed to specify "Men only" on a 98 percent male forum and silly me I emailed him anyway, thinking he would be helpful what with me having publicly come to his defense, thereby launching him to the number one slot and no one has any hope of catching him.
Patrick recommended I try a writing service online. I did and made small sums of money for a few years that way under dire circumstances where I shouldn't have been making ANY money, for which I'm grateful.
Silly me, I publicly repeated his advice to me on Hacker News and in the same discussion, posting after I posted, he effectively dragged me without naming me and without admitting I was repeating his advice. So he made me look extremely stupid and undermined my credibility.
Some years later, someone asked for advice on how to handle an issue at work and Patrick's reply starts histrionically with repeating lawyer SIX times. I left a comment of my own but also separately blogged about it.
My blogs have very little traffick and almost no one ever posts them anywhere like Hacker News, Metafilter or Reddit. Patrick's histrionic comment was the top ranked comment in the discussion and he was very high on the leaderboard, so I was concerned his awful advice would have undue sway and go bad places for the person asking.
I had once before posted something to my blog hoping someone on Metafilter would read it when the buttheads who run Metafilter deleted my reply. Although it's not the blog where I originally posted it, that's documented HERE.
So I hoped that I could repeat that success of getting information to the INDIVIDUAL with the question in spite of site "politics" without getting into a pointless pissing contest with Patrick whom I already knew had zero respect for me and would be happy to drag me publicly.
Although almost no one ever posts my work anywhere, they occasionally make an exception if it's effectively GOSSIP guaranteed to bite me in the ass. So someone posted it to Hacker News where both Patrick and Thomas were eager to drag me in comments, contrary to their constant virtue signaling of wearing their Catholic religion on their sleeve.
I'm pretty sure their constant virtue signaling is not why they do well on Hacker News, though they probably don't see it that way. My guess is that Paul Graham, one of the two primary co-founders of YC and the original mod of Hacker News, is Catholic though I have never seen him say so.
So it's probably a little like me getting along with people who have been in the military. I don't do that on purpose. I don't seek them out. We are just more likely to hit it off because we have a shared context and they will be inclined to interpret me as refreshingly direct whereas some people think I'm merely rude, crude and socially unacceptable.
So probably many of the first people who joined Hacker News were Catholic because Paul Graham was personally inviting people he knew and probably he's Catholic.
The first piece by me anyone other than me posted was renamed by them as On the prominence of women on HN and also was interpreted pretty negatively by people in comments. For the record, I was trying to understand why I was being treated by people on HN as if I were "prominent for a woman" in spite of my low karma score and not being any kind of big shot, career wise, etc.
And I blogged about it and had very little traffic and zero reason to believe anyone would post this to Hacker News. But they did and then I got dragged for it.
I used to post my own writing on HN regularly. At some point I stopped because you are taken less seriously if you post it than if someone else posts it.
No, no one there misses my writing. Other people have not taken to sharing it, not there, not on Metafilter and not on Reddit. Not anywhere public that I am aware of.
I joined Hacker News to learn to code. I thought I would make a software program to share what I know about health and I no longer have any desire to do that and no longer think it's likely I can write some kind of app or whatever that will make money, so I'm not sure I want to learn to code.
I later set it as a goal to make the leaderboard. The data I tracked in the retitled piece about the prominence of women on HN convinced me I was like number two or three and then the highest ranked woman got banned. I was homeless. It was a cheap hobby. I thought it would be funny to be the first woman on the leaderboard while homeless.
I made the leaderboard a few weeks after I got off the street and a month or so later changed handles and started my quest over. As far as I know, I'm the ONLY woman to have ever made the leaderboard.
It's 100 names and those names change sometimes, so I'm less than one percent of the people to have made the leaderboard. In contrast, women CEOs account for 10.4 percent of Fortune 500 company CEOs.
Hacker News is effectively the water cooler conversation of the largest, most powerful old boys club on the planet and I'm effectively in a league of my own.
Though I participate a lot less than I used to. I occasionally post "because I'm on the leaderboard and the only woman who seems to have pulled that off" but I feel like that old Sprite commercial: What's my motivation??
I no longer really have one. It isn't lining my pockets. It hasn't led to a well paid job. I have ZERO friends or business contacts via HN. Even if I never participate again, I can still claim the title of being the first -- and second -- woman on the leaderboard.
It's overall a pretty negative experience for me these days and I'm generally not excited anymore to participate there and I don't have to, so I mostly don't.
If I still felt invested in my relationship to HN, I would not be writing this post that effectively drags three of the most prominent members of the forum because unlike the women in tech who post their whiny, misandrist shit on Reddit, I'm very well aware that I'm on the Internet and the people I'm talking about or people who care about them can and probably will find this and it amounts to cutting my own throat socially.
Perhaps some asshole will also post this SHIT to HN so everyone can drag me for it like they've done before. Or perhaps they will finally, at long last, ban my sorry ass like Metafilter did and Cyburbia and several other forums.
I don't really care. Being a member of HN isn't paying my bills and seems unlikely to EVER help me further my career goals, improve my income etc. and all attempts to try to get people there to help me improve my income have done nothing while everyone essentially told me "Quit your bitching and get a REAL job."
That's something that wasn't done to Patrick. He seems to more or less make his money as a blogger and established his audience via HN and got a job at a YC company when his freelancing etc. stopped fulfilling his wildest dreams of avarice.
Besides, I tried that and that also bit me in the ass, a tale outside the scope of this post.
If you are a woman in tech and they PAY YOU good money and you aspire to have a future in your field, I will suggest you get a fucking clue and stop dragging male coworkers in forums like r/WomenInTech.
They probably won't ever tell you to your face they read that post and know it's you but rest assured it will impact your career. And probably not in a good way.