If you must compare me, think of Malcolm X. Do not make the mistake of thinking I'm nice to women, men, other people of colour, or anybody else.
I like your sentiment, but I have a hard time imagining women out there who feel excluded by things like the name of a software package. I would love to see more brains in software, but I don't think word play is a major barrier. I'm willing to be proven wrong, but I would like to hear from first hand sources -- not a bunch of dudes on a software forum who claim to know what women want.
Edit: Instead of arguing if the word `bro` is offensive, could you point me to people who are offended?
How very odd that despite all of our behaviour being so non-offensive and non-exclusionary, we don't seem to have any women who want to hang around this forum with us, and especially don't want to engage in discussions about exclusion where the immediate response to any questioning to for the questioner to be shouted down in vituperative terms.
Correlation -> Causation?
Is that seriously why you think there aren't more women on HN? Because it's offensive and exclusionary against women?
I'm not a car guy, but if I went to a meetup of car enthusiasts and all the sudden they dialed back everything they said so that I didn't feel like an "outsider", I would feel incredibly self conscious about being there. I probably wouldn't show up again. Whereas if they just treated me as a noob and gently brought me up to speed, I'd feel included.
Maybe it's the same thing with tech? Maybe all these social justice warriors going "ERMAHGERD SAVE THER GERLS" are just making women feel really fucking uncomfortable by highlighting the fact that they really are outsiders at this point? Maybe the nicest thing you could do for women in tech is just, you know, treat them like regular people?
I don't know if that's the case. But I will say: I have just about as much proof as you do on your theory that women aren't in tech because men are exclusionary jerks.
Now what you're presenting me with is a proposition that if "X" is false, then I should reconsider my belief that "Y" is true. So before I give this further thought, let me call your bet:
Will you in turn agree that if "X" turns out to be true, will you reconsider your belief that "Y" is false?
I would hate to go to a lot of work to show you that there are offended women, only to hear you mansplain to me that well, there aren't enough women, or they're the wrong sorts of women, or even if they're offended that they shouldn't be offended, or some other such weaselling out.
We're talking about a social construct here (exclusionarity), so certainly the more women you find, the stronger your case is. No women is no evidence, one is weak evidence, etc. But even if you find such people, why don't you let them speak for themselves?
And why use the word "mansplain"? It's inflammatory language.
Nice, you just ruined any legitimacy your argument may have had by using the word 'mansplain'. You can't argue against potentially sexist or othering words by using a deliberately sexist, othering word.
Note that any attempts to explain why 'mansplaining' should be accepted despite its sexist, othering connotations will also apply to words such as 'bro'.
