Distancing Myself

When I was active on Hacker News -- an overwhelmingly male forum -- as a fairly prominent (in terms of visibility on the forum) female member, I tried hard to not make ugly generalizations about men. It always bothered me when other women did so and I tried to distance myself from it if I felt like I was being used to promote misandry.

That's from a piece I published moments ago elsewhere about Insults and Politics and the above quote currently has this link in it and I want to elaborate on that and then update the link to this post.

It's from a poll on Hacker News titled Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN? And it's dated October 26, 2023.

I'm commenting as DoreenMichele and my first comment is the third highest thing on the page, so not terrible but not impressive either. Part of what I say is:

364 total votes, about 5 percent female and 5 percent "other", so roughly 90 percent male.

When I joined, polls showed it to be more like 98 percent male. So non-male membership/participation has possibly quintupled in the 14+ years I've been here.

And one person -- probably male -- pedantically asks about my confidence in the data, basically. Let me say here a LOT of women on HN would interpret that as a polite dismissal because I'm a woman.

Reality: That's super normal behavior on Hacker News. They are ALL rampantly pedantic -- including ME and I have been known to say stuff like "I come here for the pedantry." -- because Hacker News was created by some uber geek with a PhD and that's like most of the point of the culture there: 

1. Do we KNOW that's actually TRUE? 

2. HOW do we KNOW?

And that's actually THE REASON I put up with so much absolute SHIT from people there for years because that helped save my life. 

I have a genetic disorder and a reasonable amount of formal education, but I'm a former homemaker and this was my opportunity to talk to people with PhDs who worked as scientists and such and be a clueless fool and learn via publicly accessible to ANY schlep -- including ME -- the equivalent of old fashioned colloquiums (apparently now called colloquy) like my dream college probably still uses as part of the curriculum.

So if you are a woman joining an all male team and people are like "Well, yes, but I have some questions about your data collection method..." or whatever, maybe bite your bitchy little misandrist tongue about him not trusting you or respecting you because you are a woman and explain to him what he wants to know.

Anyway, I replied at some length to that comment and if I'm replying at length, that's generally evidence I'm giving you my respect -- enough to put some of my time into the reply -- and taking you seriously. His pedantic questions were completely reasonable and part of what I explicitly said is:

I commented because I'm probably the only person who has a history of tracking gender-related data on HN and I know how this goes: People see the low figures and start having fits about sexism.

I'm just trying to provide context. Yes, HN skews very strongly male. It used to skew even more strongly male according to my personal observations and polls of this sort.

FWIW.

Someone else replied with:

This helps explain to me why, when there is a thread about a woman being mistreated in the workplace, there’s just loads and loads of comments dismissing the concerns and saying she’s overreacting. Quite unfortunately that’s exactly the reaction that leads to those problems persisting.

And I said in response "I have no idea how this helps explain that to you." and then didn't reply at all to her reply to that, which is an even longer paragraph that's more bluntly misandrist and attacking of Hacker News.

I replied at all specifically to distance myself from the views she was expressing and kept it as brief as possible to politely make it as clear as I could that I don't see what she's talking about and I don't agree with this person.

I was rather aggravated that some woman was replying to me to do this shit, probably WELL aware I'm the only woman on the leaderboard. I wanted nothing to do with this crap and I was not interested in arguing with her. AT ALL.

Part of what I said in the discussion is:

Those records are long lost and I'm disinclined to say too much about them publicly, but I mention them to say I did track data of some sort related to gender and HN membership for a time.

Part of the reason I was disinclined to say too much is because one of the people in my old records was someone I understood to be a MTF trans individual which I wasn't really supposed to know. 

That individual was seemingly believed to be cis female by almost everyone and because MTF trans individuals are raised as boys for a time, I think they inherently have some advantages in trying to navigate male coded culture. Those challenges are exactly what this blog is largely about -- what are my blind spots as a woman raised in heteronormative culture? -- and I felt (and still feel) that complicated my assessment of the data.

It also made it hard to try to protect their identity and say anything meaningful about the data. I didn't really want to say "One of the higher karma seemingly openly female members is really MTF trans." 

The data is long lost and I forget the details, but at the time it was something like "Oh, there are THREE women above me in karma that I can readily identify!"

And then one day, the HN handle at the top of the fictional "Women of HN leaderboard" with like 8000 karma at a time when I had like 2000 or so and the bottom of the leaderboard was around 10,000 had a conversation with someone and this individual knew them and posted a link to something of theirs and it had a male profile pic.

At that point, I realized I had assumed it was a woman because the handle sounded feminine to me and I looked up the term in question and it's NOT actually feminine. Go, me.

So that leaves two handles above me and shortens the distance between me and the top of the fictional "Women of HN leaderboard." And shortly thereafter, the woman at the top just lost her shit one day and began cussing about Paul Graham being a misogynist or something.

Paul Graham designed a company around his girlfriend's professional skills and made her co-founder. I can't imagine anyone reasonably characterizing him as a misogynist.

She was banned for that and I felt that was a reasonable call on the part of the moderator.

So that leaves me effectively the highest ranked cis female I can IDENTIFY who isn't banned with a MERE 2000 or 2500 karma when the leaderboard is like 10,000 or so. The only other openly female member I can identify with more karma than me is a MTF trans individual and I'm not really supposed to know that.

So I decided I should like get more karma than the woman who was banned to be THE top woman for certain and after doing that I was kind of like "Oh, this is fun! I shall try to actually make the REAL leaderboard, not just the imaginary Women of HN leaderboard!" And I set about doing that.

In part because I felt I couldn't protect the privacy and security of this MTF trans individual and also speak frankly about the data, I largely said nothing for a lot of years. I mean with so few women having more than a thousand karma at the time, I didn't see any means to anonymize the data and use anything resembling accurate numbers.

See also That could have gone better and The rumors of my ambitions are exaggerated.

So I was juggling a lot of sensitive stuff in the above conversation while trying to distance myself from blatantly misandrist comments made in reply to me by a woman on an overwhelmingly male forum knowing that woman likely knew I was the highest ranked woman there and was hoping to ride my coattails to visibility for her comments and/or get me to agree with her or something like that.

I don't know if it did me ANY good to be so diplomatic in that particular conversation so late in the game. Less than eighteen months later, I posted for the last time and it's not exactly like I was shocked by the decision to quit entirely.

I'm in social cyberia and dirt poor and I no longer participate there. 

But I'm fairly confident that such long-standing personal policies were a big factor in getting me to the leaderboard and that's been worth some indeterminate but substantial amount of money in terms of avoiding medical treatment, plus immeasurable value in terms of reducing and avoiding pain and suffering typical of my condition.

It's aggravating that it didn't do much for me financially in terms of establishing an earned income and extremely infuriating that I was gaslit and treated like that goal was clearly CRAZY TALK. 

But probably contrary to what people would expect, I mostly remember my time on Hacker News fondly and miss it and I'm sad that it's dead to me and I'm dead to them and no one ever so much as emailed me to say "Hey, where you been?" after I stopped participating.

(Maybe for the BEST, but, still.)

Because No Girls Allowed in the Old Boys Club -- except hookers and wives hanging off some man's arm -- and men there almost never emailed me unless they were apparently imagining they might someday get into my panties.

I guess I would probably be less miserable or something if like so many of the OPENLY man hating, misandrist nasty little bitches there I were more bitter about my relationship to the site. But I really feel more like "GOOD RIDDANCE bitchy little c*nts of HN only there to OPENLY piss on the MEN while swearing they are keeping you out because THEY are sexist."

Because it sucks to simultaneously feel like those guys SAVED MY LIFE and also at the same time THOSE GUYS were content to step over my body in the gutter because I was just a woman.

And feel like the Poster Child proving the man-hating bitches RIGHT.

But:

People sometimes end up being a symbol for something they never had any desire to be a symbol of. What people project onto them says more about the people doing the projecting than it does about the person they have decided to rather viciously use against their will.

So don't hang your crap on me.