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By definition, spam is unsolicited. If someone gives a website their email address, and they are sent website-related content, it's not spam.

If the receiver doesn't like it, it's called email-the-receiver-didn't-like, and they can unsubscribe. Still not spam, though. Pretty simple?

There are several of these people/stories out there. All still use some kind of currency, though. Usually favors, or they trade physical things. What's wrong with a paycheck when you're doing work that solves a problem? It's still a system of mutually-beneficial trade, yet it's seen as less noble. Why is that?

Beautifully said. My mind always goes there too.

Sorry, I hate to be this person, but do you know who the high-paid, "celebrity" hair stylists are? Men. If you look at all the communications careers-- teachers, psychologists, marketers. Men make the most money and have the most prestige in female-dominated professions. "Flipping" a scenario is rarely the best way of formulating an argument.

You're obviously not even trying to understand this.

To be clear, what we're talking about here is not a simple interpersonal issue. It's sexism within a company.

It doesn't matter whether the source of that sexism is the way the men treat women, or whether its the way a high-powered woman treats the other women. (Both are at play in this particular story.) If someone is being discriminated against due to their gender, the company culture has an issue with sexism.

I brought up jealousy as an example, but I didn't mean it to be romantic. It can be an issue of feeling threatened by another woman, as when a woman used to be the only female voice at her company. It's a twisted perspective, but there's data to say it exists.

Women can absolutely be sexist towards other women-- as in a jealousy scenario. Sexism is being targeted because of your gender. The fact that this is not obvious explains a lot.

Have you ever heard of gaslighting? I don't know what actually happened with this woman either, but it is unfair to say, "Tell us what exact event caused this."

Many people have developed PTSD from a traumatic childhood within which no one distinct event/spoken sentence can be pointed to-- just many, many hurtful episodes over days, weeks, months, and years.

There probably was an event that set her over the edge. I just wouldn't expect it to be some Disney movie scene in which a guy in a suit slams his fists down and shouts, "Women are the worst!" Real people are more crafty than that. Real-life abuse is more subtle.

Again-- I don't know what happened. Just can't help but point out the kind of faulty logic being used here, since it is so common.

Says a person who has obviously never been in such a situation and can't even imagine the reality.

It's cartoon-ish to say, "Well then I'd sue and everything would be worth it." Know why most women don't sue? Death treats. Rape threats. Not being able to ever get a job in tech again. No one believing the claims could possibly be true. The expense of suing someone and losing. Etc.

The day-to-day psychological effects alone are bad enough that, with any familiarity, you would never roll the dice on that chance.

She never said GitHub "wasn't like that" as much as that she was doing her best to change the situation from inside of her own company (GitHub). She encouraged women to join GitHub because of the change she was working on creating-- not because it was a utopia at the present time. That was never claimed. (Though your point is still valid that she was "changing her tune" and that is a risk for anyone to do publicly.)

Not all women are extroverts? I'm a woman and could go without seeing people for a very long time. I think this is a huge misunderstanding of what it means to have a preference for the "social." It's about the purpose behind the project, not face time.

You really want to present this law as a matter of women wanting an "out"? You have no idea why anyone is advocating for this.

I have no problem talking "men's issues." I have a problem, though, talking about men's issues with a person who hasn't even investigated the very foundation of what is happening in a situation before jumping to "me, me, me."

Women are regularly-- constantly-- kidnapped and sexually/emotionally/physically abused into sex work. In the US-- not just in third world countries. They make no profit. They win the prize of being beaten, but not to death. Then, when what they're doing is discovered, they go to jail. Instead of the kidnapper. Which they can't fight because the person who has actually profited from what they've done would literally kill them and their entire family if they did.

That is why anyone is advocating that buying-- not selling-- sex be illegal. Because there are far more men benefiting from female prostitution than females benefiting from it. And the organizations that try to rescue women are made helpless by current legislation.

The solution presented is imperfect, of course, because 100% of women do not fall into this category. It's just that the women in this situation have no way of identifying as such without someone going after the people they love.

On the other hand, you have men who are down in the dumps, who seek a prostitute to feel better. There may be legitimate mental health issues there, which is deeply unfortunate.

We could make their side "legal" as well. But would that make the situation better or worse? It seems to me that jailing a man who purchases sex is the least of two "evils." Which is the best any legislation can do, really.

If you want someone to be mad at, please, be mad at the pimps. Not women-- as a big, faceless entity, no less.

Also try to familiarize yourself with an issue before jumping to conclusions like this. If something sounds completely absurd, chances are you haven't heard both sides.

You can't see the irony in this.

HN readers in these gender discussions are so outright condescending, hateful, and knowingly, deliberately unreasonable-- not to mention "othering"-- it makes me consider never coming to this website ever again.

Thank you for being a voice of reason, even though doing so can be incredibly frustrating in its fruitlessness sometimes.

I have to disagree, because I don't see what being tech-savvy has to do with it.

There are therapists, landscapers, used car dealers, craftsmen, accountants, etc. All kinds of people are small business owners and have company blogs. Maybe they fumble around their website, but they can tell when the written content of an article on their topic (landscaping, accounting, etc.) is junk.

This is the part that confuses me, I guess. The business owner gets the email. It sounds spammy. Maybe they fall for it anyway and receive the article to post. But don't they then realize that it's crappy? It's not as if spammers are logging in to their WordPress account and posting on their behalf. Business owners ultimately have full veto and editing power.

So why don't they cut out the spammy stuff like keyword links? Or, if the content is really garbage, say "no thanks"? The only reason I can see is if they're terribly desperate for content, in which case they're knowingly degrading their own platform.

Exactly. I've been an avid guest blogger, and it has never had anything to do with Google. It's about a wide-reaching, respected brand vouching for my work. There's no PR more valuable than when a relevant influencer grants you their audience.

Having a well-trafficked blog of my own, I also receive hundreds of these awful spam emails. But why would I ever take their offer? My blog is respected by my niche because I would never post junk. Niether would the publications I write for. That's why there's still an audience there.

I'm not sure if this is an insult, but it reads like one.

To add my own experiential insight as a female who started coding at 11 (without the aid or encouragment of a parent like you!)...

Reflecting on my thought processes at that age, I remember it being entirely about 2 things:

1. Expression. Nothing could have sounded more dull than building aimlessly-- I wanted to DESIGN. (My definition of this being "carrying out a specific communicative purpose through look and function.") I wanted to make a website that demonstrated my tastes and values to my friends. (Which is likely why I went straight to websites and not desktop software.)

2. Social dynamics. Similar but different to the aforementioned point, I wanted to actually affect other people with what I was making. As a young girl, that typically meant impressing potential friends and boyfriends. I had a poetry site at one point. I made sites for a fake band my girl friends and I talked about forming. I had tons of blogs. I really should have segued into games at that time, as that would have fallen in the same category, but sadly I did not.

While I know every human being is different, I was what you'd consider a "girly girl." So I believe the difference between myself and a young boy was quite pronounced in a stereotypically feminine direction-- which is where one should be investigating a subject like this, in my opinion.

I've been considering what interested my 11-year-old {female} self about programming. The question keeps popping up, and the only answers I've seen are so vague that I feel something of a moral obligation to offer my own specific insight.

To put my experience in context, I didn't know a single soul interested in programming IRL. So the only way I could have come to it is from a deeply genuine place.

In my adult life, I've heard many men talk about their excitement for coding/programming at a young age, and it is almost always about the love of simply building things. Because building is fun.

Unfortunately, my experience could not have been more different. Reflecting on my thought processes at that age, I remember it being entirely about 2 things:

1. Expression. Nothing could have sounded more dull than building aimlessly-- I wanted to DESIGN. (My definition of this being "carrying out a specific communicative purpose through look and function.") I wanted to make a website that demonstrated my tastes and values to my friends. (Which is likely why I went straight to websites and not desktop software.)

2. Social dynamics. Similar but different to the aforementioned point, I wanted to actually affect other people with what I was making. As a young girl, that typically meant impressing potential friends and boyfriends. I had a poetry site at one point. I made sites for a fake band my girl friends and I talked about forming. I had tons of blogs. I really should have segued into games at that time, as that would have fallen in the same category, but sadly I did not.

That said-- while I know every human being is different, I was what you'd consider a "girly girl." So I believe the difference between myself and a young boy was quite pronounced in a stereotypically feminine direction-- which is where one should be investigating a subject like this, in my opinion.

To state the obvious: female rape jokes are everywhere, all the time. Both are terrible, of course.

Saying "your average uncle joe" does not ring sexist to me? You're drawing a comparison, to whomever you want to, and not making any radical assumption about a specified group of people.

As for your rape anecdote... I hope you'll give the mechanics of that a bit more thought? And also consider the type of physical injury. (Many rape victims suffer damage to their internal organs and/or lose the ability to conceive.)

I read a study once that said people who think they have no bias are the most behaviorally biased people of all.

Truth. I figured after Facebook started using "they" in a singular sense that the grammar rules would change. They have only unofficially.

I definitely wouldn't have reacted if I was personally involved in this. However, I do think it's worth pointing out how masculine pronouns can wear a girl down over time / create general awkwardness (ie: Send your "web guy" over).

I'm generally not bothered by subtleties, but then I realize that what's subtle to me as a woman is entirely invisible to men.

If the guy prefers masculine pronouns, it doesn't make him a sexist exactly. But it would imply that he doesn't experience the subtle discomfort in his everyday life. So, it's worth pointing out. In a chill way, if possible.

Yes, I am completely fascinated by this too. Kinda makes one paranoid, though!

One article I read was cleverly headlined something like, "You are what your grandpa eats."

I did notice this. I wonder if "Y Combinator" being in the title has something to with it reaching popularity again and again.

My curiosity-- has anyone here actually used Storenvy? Sounds like a nice guy for a founder, and the product is good, but the USERS! Ugh.

I sold $5-20 Storenvy design templates for a while and have never done business with such awful customers. After the zillionth person decided, post-purchase, that they wanted me to redesign the template completely just for them, by tomorrow preferably-- I had had it. Don't know why such miserable people have set up shop there. Totally different crowd buying WordPress stuff.

Ugh. This was my problem with Google+ too. Everything you do ripples out into the rest of the internet in a creepy way.

When I was freelancing, I emailed back and forth with potential clients through the Gmail interface. One day I saw this party pic of a 20-something girl with beer in hand, identified by the full name of a receptionist I had emailed with professionally but never actually met. It was a suggestion from Google to connect with her on Google+, which I'm sure she'd have been mortified by. I deleted my account that day.

Exactly. Whoever thinks admissions people, recruiters, or anyone else can fully put aside their bias to make a decision is scarily ill-informed. Most of it happens subconsciously. Thus the push for diversity among decision-makers in business, government, etc.

Also: anyone who has freelanced knows that those clients who are most reluctant to pay are the worst people to work with, right?

So why do we assume that everyone trying to cheat his system is Tiny Tim? lol

Maybe it's not good to reward them for trying to cheat? Maybe this enables entitled people to keep on feeling entitled to everything for free? Just saying. I get a little bothered when this sort of thing is met with no criticism at all. Like, he's giving something away for free? He is better than us! If only we all were so noble! lol