Here you cross into making this yet another same-old generic ideological thread, thus guaranteeing repetition and tedium. What more we can do to explain to HNers that this is where discussions become off topic because the light/heat ratio goes to zero? I realize the line isn't obvious when a topic starts out close to it anyhow. But you know, it especially isn't obvious when you aren't consciously looking for it in the first place. Since you have a habit of doing this in HN threads and stand out as a user who's done particular damage this way—unintentionally I'm sure—we need you to do a better job with this.

Perhaps the following heuristic would help. If a comment breaks away from the specific content of the specific story and becomes generically ideological, it's on the wrong side of the line and you probably should not post it.

Note that this doesn't have to do with the ideologies or politics in question, or what view you're arguing for. It has to do with generic discussions being boring in HN's sense of the word.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

First, all of it is predictable. Each time something gets repeated, its potential to gratify curiosity diminishes. In the case of ideological squabbles, the repetition is so entrenched that there's no curiosity potential left at all. What is has instead is strong conflict potential, meaning that such discussions not only add no value here, they burn up and destroy what does have value.

Second, it's all generic. The larger a question is, the harder it is to say meaningful things about it. Signal/noise ratio goes down as topics get more generic.

I don't doubt that it's possible for people to find new, meaningful things to say about large generic questions. But internet comments are not the right genre for expressing them. Someone who truly has such ideas would write a book or an essay, for the same reason one wouldn't excavate the foundation for a house with a thimble.

No, my solution to a sense of isolation is instead to find ways for women to no longer feel isolated within their field.

A great example with the other sex would be male nurses. Male nurses are definitely the minority in their field, yet they manage to not feel isolated overall. Even if they did, creating a male-nurse-only group wouldn't do a thing to correct the isolation-causing systems in their place of employment, and would only work to further separate male nurses from the majority by isolating them from the wider nursing community.

If women feel isolated, we should try to find out why and correct that instead of just sticking them with other isolated women.

What is wrong with doing something like this until they generally feel less isolated, then moving on to something else?

IE Why is it unreasonable for this to be a step along the path?

This is possible. I do not know.

> What is wrong with doing something like this until they generally feel less isolated, then moving on to something else?

What I'm afraid will happen by taking this route(though I do not know that this will happen) is that this will divert energy that would have gone into converting work cultures to improve the interaction between men and women and shift that energy into an external forum that doesn't affect their real employment conditions in the slightest.

I'm also afraid of the optics of a double standard. If women can have women-only groups while men can't socially get away with having men-only groups at the same time that the number of women grows in the field, then that may make seemingly displaced men very angry.

I could be wrong. If you see a reason why this doesn't make sense, please let me know.

This so much. Most men in tech can have a majority male discussion in any open community, due to their numbers. The amount of disparity from men towards leap in this thread is a prime example of why we women in tech seek to have discussions in more closed environments.