God I hate the lack of multiquote.

One person is born into a world in which the lifelong message is that they're second class. They're told not to take math because they won't need it to become a baby-making machine, or maybe that they'll just end up in jail anyway because that's the way the system is. Hard work doesn't matter because you're not the right type of people.

I want to isolate this because this is a pretty good distillation of the actual problem. The solution here is to teach girls to take math, it's to teach girls not to be scared of math, and it's to teach them that before they're old enough to drop out of school. It's vanishingly unlikely that an eighteen-year-old that's lived her entire life hating math is going to find out she suddenly loves calculus (theoretical math being entirely different notwithstanding). Yes, it can happen, but it would be disingenuous of us to believe it's all that common.

Cultural cherry-picking is "the ends justify the means" discrimination, but it's still discrimination. It doesn't send the right message when there's a woman on the panel because "they needed a female". Panels should always be unbiased samples. It's the population that needs to be changed, not the sample.

USCs state of affairs is made worse because by canceling the event, they've all-but-disclosed to the world at large that they did, in fact, need a token female.

All I'll say is, cancelling an event at pretty much the last minute because the sole woman on the panel had to drop out sends the message that women are only valuable as props to showcase you diversity. It does absolutely nothing to further the advancement of women in the industry.

All I'll say is, cancelling an event at pretty much the last minute because the sole woman on the panel had to drop out sends the message that women are only valuable as props to showcase you diversity. It does absolutely nothing to further the advancement of women in the industry.

Really? The message I take from that is that inclusion of women is the most important issue in the industry.

All I'll say is, cancelling an event at pretty much the last minute because the sole woman on the panel had to drop out sends the message that women are only valuable as props to showcase you diversity. It does absolutely nothing to further the advancement of women in the industry.

Really? The message I take from that is that inclusion of women is the most important issue in the industry.

I've sat watching this conversation and I feel now is the right point to interject.

The impression that I get from this is "the inclusion of women is more important than everyone's education, female or male" as everyone, regardless of gender, lost out on the opportunity to attend the event and I am sure most had taken time out of their schedule for it, not just the speakers.

If I'd specially taken time out of my day to see any event that I felt was cancelled when it didn't need to be I'd be quite annoyed.

I really don't care who is speaking at the event so long as they are what it says on the tin, "legends of the industry" - regardless of their gender, race or any other tag society feels the need to pin on someone for no apparent reason.

There's my two cents worth, don't spend it all at once! :)

I really don't care who is speaking at the event so long as they are what it says on the tin, "legends of the industry" - regardless of their gender, race or any other tag society feels the need to pin on someone for no apparent reason.

In a post above I outline two types of people. This is the reaction that identifies the second type. It's not an illegitimate reaction. It demonstrates how the problem continues to propagate. Consider it in light of what I posted above.

You know, I see a lot of bitching and moaning about diversity advocacy in here. Let me ask something: how many people in this thread are not white males?

I suspect I'm going to offend some idiots with that question. It strikes me as hollow if not downright laughable for a bunch of guys to sit on the internet and complain about diversity initiatives for game development IN a game dev space that is catastrophically bereft of women and probably of non-white people as well. One sided doesn't even begin to cover it.

Maybe I've been skimming a different thread and comments section on the social media posts than you, but I haven't really seen a whole lot of "OMG, Diversity is BAD!"

I have been seeing "OMG, why would they ruin things for everyone when something useful could still have been done!?"

Cancelling something like this and saying "No, we can't do it AT ALL because it isn't diverse enough!" doesn't help anyone. Those who are happy with diversity lose out, because the event/class/project/whatever gets cancelled, and those who are actively hostile toward the idea of diversity will then use this kind of BS as 'ammo' to fight against the idea of actively doing things to encourage change, and will make them that much more hostile in general.

You know, I see a lot of bitching and moaning about diversity advocacy in here. Let me ask something: how many people in this thread are not white males?

I suspect I'm going to offend some idiots with that question. It strikes me as hollow if not downright laughable for a bunch of guys to sit on the internet and complain about diversity initiatives for game development IN a game dev space that is catastrophically bereft of women and probably of non-white people as well. One sided doesn't even begin to cover it.

I'm a lurker here although I do participate in a thread once in a while if it interest me. And I've been visiting this website actively since game programmers megasite + game programmers 99, all the way until I realize even big companies are taking small market (phones / mobiles) and I just focused on non creative jobs. still IT though.

I'm not white, and not American.

The way I see this - its sad that it get cancelled. I think someone famous once said that you can't fight racism with racism. I think the same with sexism.

Based on that given face book link - I think a lot of people will get angry.

Apparently they were so commited to diversity to cancel the entire event because the lone woman panelist didn't show up, but not commited enough in order to simply have more women in the panel so they wouldn't depend on one person's presence in the first place. Great :P

I could be wrong, but this strikes me as "we invited a token woman in order to pay lip service to diversity, she dropped out, and instead of taking the heat for our choices and dealing with the potential twitter/fb backlash, we cancel entirely so people won't say mean thing about us").

You know, I see a lot of bitching and moaning about diversity advocacy in here. Let me ask something: how many people in this thread are not white males?

I suspect I'm going to offend some idiots with that question. It strikes me as hollow if not downright laughable for a bunch of guys to sit on the internet and complain about diversity initiatives for game development IN a game dev space that is catastrophically bereft of women and probably of non-white people as well. One sided doesn't even begin to cover it.

You know, this is a serious question of mine: *why* don't we have more women here, or generally more non-white dudes?

I mean, I don't think we have been hostile to the few that *have* been here.(tbh, I can remember a very old instance of an Asian girl, can't recall the name, way back when, which lurked the Lounge for a long time, then asked if people were willing to "hold her hand" if she gave a try at programming, only to have some people call her "attention whore" - we're talking about pouya and nes8bit and yodathecoda days of yore here).

So...since we are...basically....,well, nice, what *is* the problem exactly that causes non-white-men persons that are intersted in game development to not want to be part of this forum? There must be some cause to this that can be addressed. If there's some sort of "reaching out" strategy that needs to be implemented, why haven't we done this already?(mostly the staff that is, of which obviously I'm not part of, so I don't actually know if they've already done that or not)

PS. (And also, why are we mostly *white* males? Where do the multitudes of Asian engineers, at the very least, hang out anyway?)

With regards to the gender/racial/cultural makeup of the forums: "There are no women on the internet" - A phrase that I've come across a number of times, specifically relating to older generation text based sharing online. Kind of not as much of a thing now in an era of online Voice and Video as it was a decade ago, but how many people in this thread can you confidently identify the gender and cultural background of?

Unless someone states who they are, then the assumption tends to be that they are a white male. Why? Probably because for a very long time in the early history of the (English speaking parts) of the Internet it was mainly white males involved due to a large and wide ranging number of factors. It is also part a self fulfilling prophecy really due to the sexism and hostile nature of a very visible and vocal part of the user base. It doesn't take many hostile and annoying people out of a larger user base to drive away potential new comers who stand out from the 'accepted norm'. If you came online as a teen, and faced a barrage of sexists and racist comments anytime anyone learned details about you, then are you going to stick around (or keep letting people know those details) when you could instead go do other things?

Hell, I've caught enough flak in some online communities that I turned my back on them and left just from idiots learning I was Canadian.