But, you're right, it has been an issue at some conferences. So it's worth clarifying.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discrimination

Do you believe that no gender discrimination in favour of men occurs in the rest of the industry? Are you against any particular act of discrimination that you happen to witness, or are you stating a preference for a system in which no discrimination occurs?

2. If we assume that an imbalance in a system is self-enforcing, then it is unlikely to remedy itself - even if we remove what initially caused the imbalance, because it is self-enforcing.

As a society, we accept discrimination in order to build a better and more equitable future.

SV prides itself on being a meritocracy, but it isn't a perfect one. People were born with money and connections have it much easier than the average schmo off the street. But certain minorities in our field* also have the added burden of having to battle pervasive stereotypes that sometimes borders on downright hostility on top of a near complete lack of a support network.

In order to become a more perfect meritocracy, we should strive to level the playground for everyone, but we can't easily tilt the playground such that average schmo's are on equal standing with people born into SV royalty, but we can make some minor shifts to help overcome the burden of being stereotyped because of what you look like.

So we accept some discrimination. And we benefit from it. The fact of the matter is that having diversity in startups is A Good Thing and increases the odds of success (unless your plan is to only sell your product to people who look/act/think just like you).

Women (and some men) tend to be very suspicious of male-only spaces because they think that said men are plotting to reestablish the Patriarchy. Not really, though.

Edit: dug up a few pointer links:

http://www.transadvocate.com/unpacking-transphobia-in-femini...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transphobia#Transphobia_in_fem...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_views_on_transgenderi...

  > self-identified feminist

The best way out of that hole is to describe things literally, with as little interpretation as possible.

For example, if you interview a hypothetical person Alex, and Alex claims to be a feminist, then you could write: "Alex, a self-described feminist, ..." but should perhaps avoid writing "Alex, a feminist, ..."

Sex: Assigned biological category -- male or female: designated at birth by visual assessment of anatomy based upon presumption of reproductive role.

Sexual Orientation: Term for an individual's physical and/or emotional attraction relative to their own sex such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or straight.

Gender: The social meaning given to biological sex.

Gender Expression: External characteristics and behaviors associated with gender that are socially defined and associated with masculine or feminine. For transgender people, their gender expression doesn't match their biological sex.

Transgender: People who identify with a gender that is different from their biologically assigned gender.

Intersexed: Describes people who are born with external genitalia, chromosomes, or internal reproductive systems that are not traditionally associated with either a "standard" male or female.

Cis-gender: People who identify with the sex or gender they were assigned at birth.

http://againstallevidence.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/cant-we-a...

http://culturallyboundgender.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/the-on...

http://radfemriseup.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/30-women-meet-f...

I didn't intend to make any statement concerning exclusion or condemnation of transwomen from conferences; although it seems like you did jump to that conclusion. Neither did I explicitly mention 'radical feminism.'

As for feedback; the part that's hurtful here is that while the article I posted seems to take great care to attempt to perform a level-headed in-depth deconstruction of transphobia in the feminist community and painstakingly ensuring to criticise specific behaviour by specific people rather than the feminist community as a whole.

But it's a very complex and interesting issue, not worth bringing up here, as you note. It's brought up here to stir the pot, I seriously doubt GP actually cares about transpeople at all.

>I seriously doubt GP actually cares about transpeople at all.

That's very offending.

I'm fairly sure Jessica will just apply common sense though and would put me somewhere below full (trans-)women but above cisgendered men as far as priority goes, which would make sense.

Why? If anything, a heterosexual man would be more likely to benefit from a conference for female founders because his SO is a founder or wants to start a company.

That basically means that while I don't feel like I'm in the wrong body, I do prefer (to some degree) to socially act and be treated as a woman.

> Some radical feminists only accept 'born as women' to their conferences.

I'm not necessarily against a conference aimed at women, I'm against a conference which is only for women (which this seems to be according to it's homepage). (The rules for this conference apparently are not available at this moment).

>This may be true in some rare, extreme cases, but is frankly hard to imagine. Can you cite any sources on this? My experience (though I am neither trans nor a woman) is that people involved in the feminist movement or gender-queer community try to treat a trans person as much as possible as any other person of that gender.

It is in your interests to have a government that is representative and understands your difficulties as a woman in this society, that understands these biases and is highly motivated to undo them. You would also like your daughter and the daughters of others to one day look at that poster on the classroom wall with a solid block of 44 male presidents in a row and finally see a woman among them, because you know it has an impact on their psychology and dreams and perceptions of gender, even if only one woman among 44, even if it takes decades for that poster to change enough to erase its impact. You directly experience on a day to day basis how much women are limited by society simply due to their gender. It is also obvious that despite the ever increasing number of men who are sensitive to women's issues, it is fare easier for other women to share your understanding simply because they've lived it and have been pained by it. It is not just a abstract principle of equality for them.

Is it not rational, in fact extremely smart, to have a preference toward electing women into office, when all other factors are more or less equal or less important? As a preference, a factor in your choice, not the sole decider, you would of course vote for a man sensitive to women's issues over a traditionalist women, or a man with unknown sensitivity to women's issues over a woman who was significantly less competent or more disagreeable with you on other important issues.

If one assumes falsehoods, many irrational decisions becomes rational. For example, like the assumption that a male politician doesn't care about women's issues. In fact, I live in a country with 40% of the parliament being women, even though 60% of the voters are women. Women decide the outcome of the election, which might be one reason that men are used in forced labour but women are not.

I am not for or against such a conference, though ideally they're not needed - however if there's enough of a specific interest then business-minded people will try to create a conference to leverage that interest and try to make profits from that common interest - nothing wrong with that - just stating it for the point of that conferences for X,Y,Z group will always end up existing.