A woman's body, right, and choice are not a man's responsibility, so I hope you're happy with the progress in the world.

These complaints aren't of random griefing on forums. These complaints are of people who aren't content with just insulting people, but who track them down. Wu got insulting email and a threat backed by research on how to execute it. Nina had people track down her website and post hate mail on it. Nicole I don't know enough to judge. Elise writes about being physically restrained at a gaming event, and being sent chapters of pornographic fanfic anonymously. Carolyn seems to be dealing with the abuse.

This seems to me to be largely different from being insulted and threatened on a gaming channel.

Overall, in field X that discourages group Y, members of Y in field X got there because of determination, and are very likely better on the average than not-Ys. I'd expect a female programmer to be slightly better than a male programmer on the average, and a male nurse to be slightly better than a female nurse on the average.

There's lots of things I have a great deal of difficulty understanding. Prejudice against women. Prejudice against minorities. Prejudice against GLBT people. Prejudice against the poor. What my Ukrainian neighbor went through in the 1930s and 1940s. It may be that I lack empathy, but I just don't get much prejudice against me for belonging to a group.

Therefore, I try to take complaints from people in less favored social groups seriously. I don't understand. I'm not sure I really can.

We seem to live on different planets. I see men and women who think they deserve special treatment, and I haven't noticed a real numbers difference. I observe approximately no harassment, so I can't really tell how people would react to it.

There is a difference between "Your code is crappy. How did you ever get a job as a programmer?" and "Your code is crappy. I'm going to show up at your house sometime and commit a very serious violent felony on you.". Insult my code all you want. I'll either figure you're full of BS, or I'll improve my code. I'd rather not get threats of violence.

You seem to be missing the point. The claim in TFA is that a sufficient number of real assholes exist to make women's lives miserable, and that most men don't take it seriously or do anything to help. That is entirely consistent.

Okay, suppose a woman sexually assaults me by grabbing my ass. In almost all cases, I don't have to take an unarmed woman seriously as a physical threat. I'm not a good fighter, but I'm a lot bigger than most women, and size counts here.

Now, suppose I sexually assault a woman by grabbing her ass. In general, she does have to take that as a serious threat, since I am probably capable of overpowering an unarmed woman*. (It's also easier to sexually assault a woman with a grab, as grabbing her boobs counts and grabbing my chest doesn't.)

There is a disparity here that we need to take into account.

*Probability is estimate only, not based on data, like 68.3% of all statistics quoted on the Net.

Excuse me, I did a search for "every" on the page, and found no instance of "every man". I saw "many men". The only really inclusive statement I found in TFA was this:

It’s telling that men in the gaming industry, or simply commentators, refuse to listen to the reality of these situations and try to help.

Given the attitude of so many of the replies here, she may very well have a point.

Are you feeling oversensitive about accusations? Why would that be?

Thank you for an excellent example of gross insensitivity, and making insulting claims based on a person's sexuality.

Oddly enough, as a white male, I've never received a rape threat, and darn few death threats. Nobody has ever tracked me down to insult and threaten me. What am I doing wrong?

Don't disregard manufacturing and management savings. Space-X seems determined to be the least expensive way to put stuff in LEO by far, and if we can put lots more stuff in LEO we can do a whole lot of things with spacecraft. As Stalin said about the Red Army in WWII, "Quantity has a quality all its own."

If there's a general perception that a stock is undervalued, people try to invest money by buying stock. This raises the price until people in general don't think it's undervalued any more.

A polygraph can be good at determining if somebody's nervous, which is not a good indicator of truthfulness. It might be useful in questioning or interrogation by telling the interrogator when to press and when to let slide. This assumes that the guy being interrogated can't manipulate the machine into inaccurate readings, such as showing nervousness when being asked about something basically innocuous.

Republic comes from the Latin "res publica", and normally means a government or country not headed by a hereditary monarch. That leaves a lot of room for all sorts of governing systems. The US is a republic and a democracy (or at least used to be, and can be again). The UK is a democracy but not a republic. Nazi Germany was a republic but not a democracy. North Korea is not a republic (with three Kims in a row, I'm calling it a monarchy) and not a democracy.

My observation is that, the more democratic-sounding adjectives (other than a people or place name) are tacked on to "Republic", the less likely it is to be a democracy. You do not want to live in a Democratic People's Republic.