Gender is absolutely not the only nor the most important discriminating factor in tech. Being a foreigner and, probably most commonly, being old is an extreme disadvantage in tech. Similarly, a woman coming from a wealthy family might be a privileged compared to a man coming from a poor background (which translates into lower access to education, resources, etc.).

Look at the video in the article, and tell me you don't notice some commonalities among the men in the queues.

I see mostly foreigners, who most likely have no network of support, and need a job to maintain a VISA before getting kicked out of the country. Are they in a better or worse position compared to a local woman? Does it even make sense to start asking these questions?

I want to challenge this vision where discriminations are only looked at through the lens of gender division. This is shortsighted because discrimination on the workplace is extremely diverse and it exists for the benefit of those same sponsors of this event.

A lot of times people arguing like that ignore the imbalance that exists and they go on to argue as if everything is equal to start with.

The paywall dropped on me before I could get to the end of the article, but a couple of observations:

1. “Overrun” is dehumanizing language. I’m otherwise highly sympathetic, but casting desperate people, many likely staring down deportation unless they can find a new position, as an effective horde is gross. I would like to trust that Wired provided that characterization, not the organizers.

2. The organizers ruined their own event, by not establishing and enforcing guardrails for attendance. This is a problem mostly of their own making. Rather than pointing, again, at desperate people, they should be accepting responsibility and planning to avoid the issue in the future.

I can have sympathy for people desperate for jobs, and I can understand class warfare, and yet … once again something that women and enbys spent years and decades building up, is ruined because cishet men decided it was more ‘convenient’ for them to invite themselves into spaces not designed for them.

Couldn't this same logic be used by men to justify not allowing women into the tech industry in the first place? If someone of the wrong gender being around counts as "ruining" then men could say "once again something that men spent years and decades building up, is ruined because women and enbys decided it was more ‘convenient’ for them to invite themselves into spaces not designed for them." In fact I'd say something like that attitude really is what underlies a lot of tech industry sexism.

Gender-exclusive spaces often seem appealing to the favored gender, but they're really not good for anybody.