> The catch-22 here is that if I choose to blend in, then people like the commenters above assume that everything they see was written by men, and use that as an excuse to dismiss the concerns of women in the tech industry
Couldn't this be solved by a little 'about the author' section at the end of your articles? Pull in your gravatar and add a couple of sentences about yourself. Now everyone knows you are a woman, and you didn't have to change your background to hot-pink to do so! :)
Did you read the article at all? Her whole point is that women should not have to do this, that they face discrimination if they do do this, and that we should refrain from assuming that if we don't see one of these, it's by a man. The problem isn't that they don't know she's a girl. It's that they assume she isn't one.
> Sure, I could go out of my way to make it obvious that I’m a woman. I could put my name at the top of my blog or on my About page, or I could mention it in passing in my writing. That’s not something a male author has to do, though. Furthermore, doing so results in harassment and having my writing dismissed/trivialized/tokenized because of my gender. Hence why I don’t (or at least, hadn’t until this post).
>Her whole point is that women should not have to do this, that they face discrimination if they do do this
I don't think this point is correct. The technical nature of computer science/technology makes it easier to judge a work by its technical merits, not by authorship.
Yes, that's very true, it can be more easily judged by technical merits, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will be. Not to mention it invites less-than-appropriate or nice messages.
Couldn't this be solved by a little 'about the author' section at the end of your articles? Pull in your gravatar and add a couple of sentences about yourself. Now everyone knows you are a woman, and you didn't have to change your background to hot-pink to do so! :)