This is very lofty talk for someone fully willing to take away opportunities intentionally aimed at someone else who needs it.

Taking that opportunity (which specifically, I think is also very little) is someone who also needs it. You can create this hierarchy even among the women at that very fair, in fact.

Don’t you think snatching that opportunity is going to cause fragmentation?

I think not, if framed under the right perspective.

Do you think women or minorities stop having material struggles as long as you don’t think of them as a distinct group? That’s not how it works. If it was, then before feminism, working class women would have equal material conditions to working class men, and that is absolutely not how it went.

Absolutely I don’t. And I am not claiming that the problem is solved by “meritocracy” or by just stopping thinking about this. I am suggesting that it is not responsibility of the victims to self-police and sort themselves in order of priority.

I guess your logic is that if you are working class and you help yourself you are helping the working class? Funny, but that’s not it.

That’s not what I am suggesting. I am personally just thinking in very pragmatic terms. Realistically the struggle of the working class requires strong unions and harsh battles. How are you going to build a union when I - a male - see you -a woman (but you can pick any other category) - as something else as myself, as belonging to another group? To me building strong unions requires a mutual recognition of class belonging, and this is what I think helps in a systemic way. Nothing systemic is also going to change if X% more women would be hired by Microsoft/Apple etc., with the difference that if you reach that situation having alienated and fragmented workers, that’s also where you stop.

There are other job fairs and recruitment opportunities where these guys could go to.

I have no idea why they chose to attend. What I know is that you don’t spend 600-1200$ for the hell of it if you need a job.

whoever does is taking away an opportunity that a woman needed

And how is this different from any other job? I mean, ultimately you can apply this logic to any job you are going to take. Realistically, any company that will hire you is going to have a small % of women, so any job you are taking, you are taking it from a woman (or a black person, etc.). I really fail to understand how your logic works outside the specific context of the job fair. Are you saying that besides this job fair, then no concerns anymore should exist about under represented categories?

these women need jobs regardless. You know, material conditions, the thing you were saying was much more important.

Of course, but it’s a matter of deciding the strategy to reach that objective. From my point of view, for the reasons above, I disagree with this particular one.