I'm a woman. I appear to be the only woman to ever make the leaderboard of HN (under a different handle). This is off the cuff. But, some thoughts.

I have stated that I tend to get along better with men. The response to that by other women involves ugly, bitchy personal attacks that blame me and make me feel like saying "And you wonder why I would rather deal with a man. Geez."

I have blogged about my thoughts on how women eat their own. I try to be very even handed and consider the context. I think one driving factor is that female success is a scarce product. If there can be only one token woman, then whoever got there first has tremendous incentive to actively discourage and alienate other women.

Being a prominent woman on HN has led to zero female allies from the site. Women do not email me or hit me up on twitter to bond with me over our participation on HN.

I do have one female twitter contact who is a YC alum. It is not a strong association and did not start on HN. It started on twitter.

I have had women be openly ugly to me on HN. I have had women piss all over me about how I don't speak for all women or something, never mind that I never claimed to

I have had women try to "side" with me and say incredibly misandrist things and other problematic things that make me cringe and make me want to openly reject their remarks and disavow any association with them.

I do feel women that came after me take it for granted that the atmosphere is more welcoming of women than when I got here, give me zero credit for my role in that and piss all over me. It makes me sympathetic to the thing described in the article of established women having a hostile just suck it up attitude.

I often feel other women are trying to use me to their advantage, often at tremendous threat to my hard won position.

I worked really hard to fit in here and gain the respect of the guys. I did a hard thing and many men here respect that because they have done hard things. The women who think it should be handed to them on a silver platter are often pissing all over me, my handiwork and the culture of male achievement as I have come to understand it, though I am sure my glimpses are just bare glimpses at best.

Women wind up fighting over the crumbs and it gets vicious. I find this baffling. I refuse to fight over the crumbs and cannot fathom why women don't reach out to me as a potential ally.

I don't fully understand what drives these patterns. I sometimes blog about it and a single off the cuff comment cannot possibly do the topic justice. I try to think through what might constitute real solutions. The tendency for women and society to pile on with the blame game is not constructive.

It's all well, fine and good to note that this is a pattern. The danger is in acting like women are just pathological creatures all around and not wondering what drives such behaviors.

I try like hell to be sympathetic to why other women are frequently so awful to me. But I have no plans to cut my own throat for their benefit. I would prefer to find another path forward. In the absence of that, I have every intention of looking out for myself. Nearly 6 years of homelessness taught me no one else really will.