What I was lampooning is not simple opportunity, but downright manipulation, as benevolent as it may seem. That&#x27;s the difference between allowing a child and encouraging&#x2F;cajoling them to do something.<p>When you mount a huge campaign to get girls to code, even if they are not interested, are you doing the former or the latter? What about when you do the same for hiring more women in certain areas? Or for getting more women presenters in certain technical conferences?<p>And if we as a community decided that we should feel bad for being interested in things that overwhelmingly attract males, why not extrapolate the proposed solution? Maybe it gets absurd enough that we realize it&#x27;s been wrong all this time.