I'm not judging particular people (I have no opinion on the individuals mentioned), and I honestly haven't kept up with this whole narrative so there are certainly no statistics I can cite. I'm saying that stating that someone belongs to a class is entirely insufficient to demonstrate the assertion that they are not biased against that class, particularly in a context where that class is systemically biased against.
The personal opinions of individuals are pretty irrelevant when discussing systemic issues, so I don't see that as very productive to focus on. In either direction, actually; personally well-meaning people can nonetheless be complicit in systemic racism/sexism/etc., and personally bigoted people might not be.
I do think YC is probably more open to women as founders than the VC norm, but it's the overall statistics that convince me of that more than some attempt to discern what its principals personally think about things. That was the most interesting part of this post as well, talking about what YC is actually doing.
Systems are made of (or by) people. Systematic biases are not curses handed down by gods, they originate from somewhere within organizations.
It is therefore relevant to consider the individuals involved when we are talking about systematic biases of the system which is composed of them. You cannot talk about the biases of YC without talking about the biases of the people who comprise YC. It would be like talking about the structural integrity of a building while trying to never consider the physical properties of the building materials.
(Of course, even if we strike off this entire thread of conversation as irrelevant, that does not make the comment I was responding to any less problematic.)
Notwithstanding the merits of either side, you are (1) structurally mis-understanding the nature of the argument. (2) baiting an HN commenter to personally disparage [persons x, y, and z]; and (3) making a veiled threat.
None of this is relevant to the discussion at hand.
The [persons X,Y,Z] are not representative employees at firm Q [0,1]. None of the men overlap in expertise with the positions held by the women. None of the women overlap in expertise with the positions held by the men. The "model" person the firm likes to do business with is a caricature of only <one> of the sub-sets of staff. Because there is no gender overlap in these two sets, this is "strucurally" sexist...at least arguably...regardless of which sub-set does the selection [2,3].
[0] HR/Ops specialist, a Lawyer, and an Accountant.
[1] The rest of the staff are all Hackers or Designers.
[2] The allocation actually doesn't matter. Only the stratification.
[3] Note, however that the "model" personality type is de-facto gendered [male]. This is not a logical necessity. It could be the case that the roles are reversed--either all of the hackers were/are women, etc...or the target Founders could be Hr/ops-legal-accounting...etc.
The "appeal to statistics" is just re-proposed racist talking points. You would not accept it in a discussion involving race, and you should not accept it in a discussion involving sex or gender.
> Notwithstanding the merits of either side, you are (1) structurally mis-understanding the nature of the argument. (2) baiting an HN commenter to personally disparage [persons x, y, and z]; and (3) making a veiled threat.
1) See above.
2) I am not baiting anybody into disparaging these women, and do not see how my comments could honestly be misconstrued as such. I don't want @zorpner to insult these women, I want zorpner to realize that unless they have specific information about these specific women, then there is no justification for assuming such disparaging things about these women.
3) I have made absolutely no threats, veiled or otherwise. Where the hell are you getting this from?
> "The [persons X,Y,Z] are not representative employees at firm Q [0,1]...""[0] HR/Ops specialist, a Lawyer, and an Accountant..."
This has been addressed in this discussion by one of the women in question, I am genuinely stunned that you are repeating it.
