Poll: Male or Female?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1571216

by lukeqsee • 16 years ago

73 63 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

tomerico• 16 years ago

Previous Poll: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=591309

eof• 16 years ago

20-1 ratio over a year ago, currently at 27-1 on this poll

lukeqsee2• 16 years ago

True; however, the "reporting" size is 1:~14.1.

andrewvc• 16 years ago

Poll: A/S/L? Let's chat!

w1ntermute• 16 years ago

Is this really necessary? Everyone knows that all the tech sites out there are sausagefests. There's no need to reiterate that point.

lukeqsee2• 16 years ago

Here's to hope for change when men stop constantly reminding them of it. And respect them for their talents, not their anatomical features.

dhs2• 16 years ago

However, humans - male, female, and variant - often lust for the anatomical features of other humans, and the associated emotions often trump any rationality. And there is danger in not noticing this. And a surprising number of humans, here and elsewhere, don't seem to notice it.

tokenadult• 16 years ago

The one thing you have to remember about voluntary response polls is that they tell you essentially nothing about the underlying reality in the population of interest.

http://mrho.net/blog/?p=782

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517143

http://books.google.com/books?id=u_rpJMy8R3EC&pg=PA15...

The classic example in any good statistics textbook is the Literary Digest poll to predict the outcome of the 1936 presidential election in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Literary_Digest

The poll failed despite a huge sample size and high response rate. The failure of prediction was because of convenience sampling and response bias.

jessriedel2• 16 years ago

That's all true. But honestly, I would expect this poll to be biased toward over-counting woman. I mean, if I saw a poll to find out how many red-heads (like me) were on HN, I think it would catch my eye and I'd be more likely to click.

alnayyir2• 16 years ago

You're using your non-fake account, borkbork. What gives, why bother?

ljf• 16 years ago

Was just about to say the same - some stats show more women partake in polls (offline) but online many women are put off by them esp. in a male dominated zone, such as this...

But the current stats show this is a hugely male dom site...

ashishbharthi• 16 years ago

Female hackers are only present in SyFy Movies, TV Shows and books.

borkbork• 16 years ago

I'm a woman who was originally introduced to HN through Reddit and started reading about a year ago (this is a throw-away account that I will probably not use again.) I don’t really care about startups – I'm a physics graduate student planning on going into academia – but I do care about programming and tech. I have not yet been able to find an active online community that caters to these interests that I would describe as being "female-friendly." At HN, at least, sexist jokes are usually downvoted/discouraged because of their lack of content, which is more than I can say for Reddit. I generally enjoy HN except when the community decides to discuss gender, which it seems to do multiple times a week, even when it's only tangentially related to the article and despite it already having been beaten to death on this very site a million times over. These conversations invariably turn into, "Women: Does society screw them up or is there just something weird with their brains (on average of course, let's be PC here)? Dudes speculate." This is the most interesting topic to hackers, apparently.

I guess it's good to know that HN just feels like a woman-free space because it practically is, in contrast to sites like Reddit that feel that way even with ~2/5 of the users being female.

orangecat3• 16 years ago

These conversations invariably turn into, "Women: Does society screw them up or is there just something weird with their brains

The common speculation is that there's something "weird" with men's brains, in that men go to extremes (both positive and negative) more often than women. (And you have to be something of an outlier to be on HN). That may or may not be more palatable, but there actually is some decent evidence to support it.

run4yourlives• 16 years ago

In our collective male defense: Even the best males have been struggling with the "How do women work?" question since the dawn of time, so you can imagine it is magnified when you introduce that topic to a group of males that disproportionately answer that question incorrectly.

I'd suggest not reading too much of it as "sexism" (even though it is) and more of "the other view". For every female physics grad there is a male nurse sharing the feeling, I guarantee that.

Regardless, I think it takes a unique individual to be on the minority side of the gender/field of study equation and applaud you for continuing to have the courage to satisfy your own desires.

Aaronontheweb• 16 years ago

"In our collective male defense: Even the best males have been struggling with the "How do women work?" question since the dawn of time, so you can imagine it is magnified when you introduce that topic to a group of males that disproportionately answer that question incorrectly."

In the words of one of my advisors - "among one the first things that was ever painted on the wall of some damp cave during the dawn of humanity was, I'm sure, a question that amounted to 'what the hell do women want?'"

It's not sexism so much as it is confusion that emerges from the fact that men and women are wired very differently, think differently, are socially coniditioned differently, and most importantly - communicate differently. Naturally a community with so many men is going have some who are prone to wonder and ask outloud.

TheSOB88• 16 years ago

Odd, I'd never noticed any such discussions. Maybe the stories I read don't get those kinds of comments, but I'll be on the lookout - I don't like that kind of thing either. (I'm male)

drewcrawford• 16 years ago

I assumed the referent was to the "why aren't women in CS?" articles that crop up with some regularity.

I would hesitate to necessarily call these sexist. The psychological aspect of that question might appeal to both male and female hackers, and I don't think the acknowledgment of a fact (i.e., the difference in enrolled CS students) is somehow sexist.

stcredzero• 16 years ago

Men: Does society screw them up, or is there just something weird with their brains? Discus!

EDIT: Annoying to be on the receiving end, no?

dkarl6• 16 years ago

I guess it doesn't need to be said that a lot of us are carrying baggage from adolescence. Even when I'm dating somebody, I easily fall into thinking that no woman will ever want me and that deep down all women are fascists who despise weakness, want to see the strong humiliate the weak, and yearn to be instruments of this brutal hierarchy of male power.

My therapist likes to remind me (and I'm paraphrasing heavily here,) "Dkarl, you've grown up, and the girls have grown up, too. You're not a dumb teenage boy trying to date dumb teenage girls anymore."

I encourage the women on HN to say their piece on gender issues when they come up, even when your comments don't fit into the prevailing conversation. Don't worry about where your comments fit, how they influence the conversation, or how people misunderstand them or hijack your points. Just put them out there, because I think the majority of men here are well-intentioned and pretty self-aware when it comes to our own thinking about women; we just don't know how women experience working with us and what we can do to improve that experience.

yummyfajitas2• 16 years ago

I guess it doesn't need to be said that people I disagree with are of low status and their opinions should be discounted for that reason.

(I realize that the third paragraph of dkarl's post has substance, just picking on the fallacious part.)

sn• 16 years ago

I doubt that most men are self-aware about their own thinking.

http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html

ahoyhere5• 16 years ago

Don't worry, the discussion about women is because people (aka men) are having a hard time getting laid, keeping a woman, dealing with the woman they have or the feelings they have about her -- or, on the other hand, understanding the appeal of women to start with.

In my experience, those men prefer to throw up their hands and act as if women are mystical instead of totally explicable (like all human beings are, if you look closely enough). That way they don't have to admit they're too lazy/incapable of understanding anyone who has a different viewpoint and priorities ;)

The "I'm ultra logical and uber rational" posture is part and parcel of it.

yummyfajitas2• 16 years ago

My "counterargument": women who complain about sexism in technology are just fatties and uglies who wish they could find a real man instead of getting pump and dumped by the occasional desperate loser.

We can try to lower the status of people we disagree with, or we could actually have a rational discussion which might teach us something.

(Oh, very clever! You've preemptively applied the "loser" label to people who aspire to rationality. I guess I lose the status competition.)

orangecat3• 16 years ago

The "I'm ultra logical and uber rational" posture is part and parcel of it.

Heh, true. And to the extent that we fail to achieve our goals with women and relationships, we're not being rational. http://lesswrong.com/lw/7i/rationality_is_systematized_winni...

You want rationality, look at pickup artists. They have (questionable at best) goals, and they do whatever it takes to achieve them with maximum effectiveness.

superk• 16 years ago

"Don't worry, the discussion about women is because people (aka men) are having a hard time getting laid, keeping a woman, dealing with the woman they have or the feelings they have about her..."

They would do better than discussing those issues here... whatever insight they get is going to be grossly skewed by the 15:1 m/f ratio...

neutronicus4• 16 years ago

Could you elaborate more on what you feel is "female-friendly?"

Just something as simple as more females? I'm interested.

frossie• 16 years ago

Could you elaborate more on what you feel is "female-friendly?"

I thought the commenter went on to explain herself on that point (by discussing downvoting of sexist comments).

One could define female-unfriendly as a place where the conversation takes place as if no females are present (or could possibly be present). Think male-locker-room.

But: There are many guys who detest that kind of thing also, and judging from the downvoting of crap comments that goes on in HN, they are making their voices heard.

It's worth noting that I know more men who self-identify as feminist than women.

ahoyhere5• 16 years ago

Calling real people "females" is a good counter-example.

hbd2• 16 years ago

These discussions on HN tend to spiral to the point where I don't really want to be a part of them. But I guess talking about something is always better than the alternative, no matter how uninformed or flawed the discussion is.

I think the "issues" category on the geek feminism wiki does a good job of summarizing the "female-unfriendly" things[1]. Objectification and a "sexualized environment"[2] is what the poster refers to can be common on other sites. Sexism[3] and essentialism[4] is something that generally takes the form of attitudes or opinions, and therefor is less obvious. I see this here on HN in various forms e.g. this comment[5] saying "women are less likely than men to engage in deeply focused solitary activities". "Othering"[6] is something you can see even on this page.

[1] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Issues [2] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Sexualized_environment [3] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Sexism - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexism [4] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Essentialism - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism [5] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Othering & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other#The_Other_in_gender_studi... [6] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1550429

cynicalkane• 16 years ago

People are very strange in general, but on a site where most people are men, questions about the ways women behave that seem strange to men are going to get discussion.

Of course this is an interesting topic to hackers. Hackers are mostly men and typically (big generalization) tend to approach interpersonal relations in a relatively analytical mindset. Understanding half of all humanity (on average of course, let's be PC here) is important, especially given our innate drive toward behavior conducive to reproduction.

Actually, it would be nice if a member of the opposite sex who understood this mindset could help us out from time to time, but I'd imagine this must be a tiresome exercise, something like how tiresome it is to explain to businesspeople how programmers work.

ahoyhere5• 16 years ago

If truly understanding women was the goal, there are a whole bunch of books that explain a whole lot... but as far as I can tell, nobody here reads them, they prefer to rely on opinions and anecdotes. Which, as any uber-rational mind will tell you, is not the same as data.

trashacct• 16 years ago

Please don't read that much into sexism. I'm a fellow geek who follows a bit different paradigm in all that I do.

And a basic fact before anything else: Women and men ARE different. There, I said it; the pink elephant in current American society.

Now, I've met men and women who are all over the place. Some are in sciences, others in humanities, others have their own business. And alongside that, I'm a dom. I have a submissive, and live with 3 other people. Both us guys are dating her, and the other guy is dating the other gal in the house. Is it "different" than most relationships? Yes, but we work.

In our relationship, some would see what I do as abuse. Ive put bruises on her the size of an apple, bound her for hours, cut her with knives, chocked her until she passed out, and other acts. She trusts me completely in that I could do anything. Yet, if she asked me for something, I would move the Earth to do so.

It would be just as unfair to make comments like "Why arent women in the sciences? how did we screw them up?" jut as it would be "Men are smarter in the sciences than women". When you have a culture say that you are supposed to do better in X instead of Y, of course there's bias.

And go figure, Im more of a supporter of womens' rights than most women are just for the fact I am a dom.

jey• 16 years ago

> "Women: Does society screw them up or is there just something weird with their brains (on average of course, let's be PC here)?"

Actually, generally it's men who are the weird ones. Males have higher variance on pretty much all measures. This means that e.g. there are more mentally retarded males than females and more genius males than females. Dismissing potential biological influences out-of-hand is the same as dismissing empiricism altogether.

russell2• 16 years ago

GENTLEMEN: we are the ones with the weird brains. Testosterone, even in the womb, rewires us for dominance, hierarchy, focus (obsession), spacial acuity, etc., so we dominate in executives, generals, Nobel prize winners, and hackers. On the other end of the spectrum we pretty much own the social failure space: homelessness, severe mental illness, prison occupancy, murder, drug dealing, financial malfeasance, war, corruption, and on and on.

Take a look at "The Red Queen"; it's a good read.

ahoyhere5• 16 years ago

And, if you find this line interesting, read this excellent speech, "Is there anything good about men?" (of course, the answer is definitely yes.)

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm

dkarl6• 16 years ago

Our obsession with aggregate differences between the sexes is pointless and probably counterproductive since we spend our days dealing with individuals, not aggregates.

hammmatt2• 16 years ago

More males than females on a technical website?

SHOCKING!

jc-denton• 16 years ago

Technical website? I thought this was more about business..

hammmatt2• 16 years ago

Touche.

It's a mix of both, I suppose. However, what I meant to convey was that it is not too surprising that there aren't many women on a website that would take some degree of technical knowledge to stumble upon. Given the differential between men and women who study technical subjects.

motters• 16 years ago

So the obvious question is, why so few females (or so many males) ?

sabj• 16 years ago

This is not surprising, but very sad. :(

More female hackers / startup-ers / etc please!

elmindreda2• 16 years ago

Gender is a binary state now?

pbhjpbhj2• 16 years ago

You can vote both or neither as well. Quaternary.

Of course any true geek who fits one of the !(0,0) responses must reply simply "yes".

elmindreda2• 16 years ago

Yes, the poll is technically quaternary, but the OP seems to ask a binary question. I'm sure that the poll would have been binary if HN supported it.

HeyLaughingBoy• 16 years ago

Male.

I almost didn't bother with a response since it should be obvious by my handle. But then I remember years ago on Yahoo! chat when I had a handle ending with the word "Man" and (allegedly straight) guys would still try to cyber with me. So now I take nothing online for granted :-)

Mz• 16 years ago

Female. I must have missed the predictions (that more women were expected) and what they were based on. Anyone care to refresh my so-called memory?

FWIW: My experience has been that women are at least as ugly about men as men are about women. While going through my amicable divorce (and occasionally since then), I was badly spammed with really hostile, anti-male "jokes" from women I knew who had some fantasy I wanted to read this bitter crapola. (Can you say "projection"?) I don't think either gender is at fault for the current state of things. I think the struggle over sexual mores and changing gender roles is largely situational and both sides end up victimized by it while they each somehow think the other group is getting over.

Poll: Male or Female?

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