Also, all of you are acting like children. This is getting pretty ridiculous.
Agreed that this is ridiculous. This is a pretty mild bit of satire, but a ton of people here are going out of their way to be offended by it. It's a great example of how many men are completely oblivious to the advantages they receive.
-- edit --
I just remembered something; wasn't there a post going around the web some time ago about a woman (in Britain?) who got her talk accepted (in some sort of academic setting?) because she's a woman and not because of her talk and she didn't know that this kind of thing was going on and got really upset about it when she found out? Might be interesting to look at the situation from her angle as well. (Interesting to those of you who didn't read her story back then.)
> If they are the subject matter experts, then yes, I would prefer they are all present, and none of them be excluded because we are searching for faux diversity.
I assumed that hypothetical was meant to be plausible, because otherwise what's the point? So yes, you're strongly implying that an all-male lineup is likely to be because of qualifications, and that including women would make it worse.
I stand by my "no reason." The StackOverflow survey is obviously flawed (women often get treated badly online, so tend to be discouraged from participating in communities like SO) and if 20% of relevant degrees go to women, why do conferences typically have far less than 20% women?