> they have to deal with serious problems that their male counterparts do not.

Who denied that? But that still leaves the question is how to react to that, and furthermore, with what motivation, and what long-term goals, if any. Which is off-topic, granted, but it's not like I mean any of this to say that "asking a female engineer is dumb, why would that even be a thing", at least not as far as I'm concerned. It's a great idea, which is why I don't see much to talk about there. When a question comes to mind, I'll pose it, until then I might still respond to tangents others went on.

> And just because other people have things worse, doesn't mean that other important problems don't exist.

No, but it's a great litmus test for differentiating between people who care about inequality where it affects them, and not so much when it affects others. For something that has morality as the sole argument, that matters. It has nothing to do with engineering either. On the one hand, John Lennon's song "Woman is the nigger of the world" is still sadly true, on the other hand, so is Ron Dellums' response to the controversy it caused:

> If you define "niggers" as someone whose lifestyle is defined by others, whose opportunities are defined by others, whose role in society are defined by others, then Good News! You don't have to be black to be a "nigger" in this society. Most of the people in America are "niggers".

-- Ron Dellums

Is that what-aboutism? Or just saying "yeah, and if this upsets you, the next thing I'm going to show you is going to make you mad, because it contains an even HIGHER concentration of what you say makes you mad about this thing!". If then people react like cork to a magnet to that higher concentration, it's not the values and principles they care about, it's that they might get something out of it. Which all sorts of people do in all sorts of areas, making them lamers in my books, nothing more, nothing less.

Yes, the victimization happened and happens, and it's unacceptable and a screaming injustice. But there is still, on top of that, this fork in the road: where the question comes up whether someone wants to find ways to STOP being a victim, or if they want to find ways to USE that status. Both approaches are used by people, and they are mutually exclusive. Being off-topic doesn't make it less true or less unsettling a blind spot. Something like Crockford getting disinvited would never ever happened with reversed genders, and we're still talking about how only women have those unique experiences? I agree it doesn't matter in scale -- women "have it worse" atm in many respects -- but it does matter in principle, and where I get a scent that it doesn't, I absolutely am out, and so are dozens of women I know.

Yes, they want a fair shot, they don't want to die the death of a thousand paper cuts, but still no, resoundingly no, they don't want a vagina pass. They want to be peers, and being more than that would be just as bad to them as being less than that. They are not corrupt people, they have character. I suspect it correlates to that, and that many females, engineer or not, actually DO notice that on top of the shitty end of the stick they receive, there are these assholes prancing around with a vagina pass, making it worse for them and everybody for personal gain. So again, while it's off-topic, and wasn't even on my radar before I saw with what rhetoric and handwaving Jacob Appelbaum was assassinated in front of our eyes, I absolutely consider it a deal breaker, an elephant on the couch, something that needs to be dealt with and nipped in the bud. I am absolutely on board with and loyal to anyone who shares this disgust of doing using victimhood to victimize - the rest can fend for themselves. Against the better part of humanity too, I dare say.