3 ms·

Fantastic article. Great examples, some of which I benefit from (English as a lingua franca for example) and some that are pretty horrifying. The realm that I

Fantastic article. Great examples, some of which I benefit from (English as a lingua franca for example) and some that are pretty horrifying. The realm that I most notice this happening every day is "political correctness". My Facebook feed is dominated by people tripping over themselves to attack racists, sexists, religious bigots, etc. Great. But many times they go way too far IMO and crucify innocents. However, there's no way I care enough to stake my reputation on defending innocent strangers. So they continue to rack up positive feedback on their campaigns. For example, this article is popular right now: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/top-10-most-sexist-things-to-occur-at-the-2016-rio_us_57a88bfce4b0c94bd3c9fb86 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/top-10-most-sexist-thing... Most of those remarks are totally fine in my book and are only sexist by willful misinterpretation. For example, how is it not newsworthy that a recent mom is competing? Even the article calls it "an incredible feat!" Then Ledecky, who "swims like a man" because she is strong enough to use the traditionally male stroke, unlike all of the other women. Girls "standing around as if they're at the mall" was just an old commentator picking the most casual place he could think of. And when he tried to defend himself by pointing out the Cherry-Picking Fallacy (he has covered women's sports for many years, so they picked one sentence online that might be misconstrued as sexist to crucify him online when his body of work is totally fine) they actually cropped his defense and cherry-picked from it as well. Anyways. Things like that annoy me because I can't say them with my name attached or I'll end up cast aside. Nobody is interested in rational discussion, the Most Intolerant does always win.

tomp 10y ago
That's a really terrible article. Sure, certain complaints are kind-of legitimate (e.g. mentioning someone is someone's wife - although I'm sure same is also often said of men married to famous women), but most just seem to be petty denials of the fact that (the best) men are almost universally better at a given sport than (the best) women.
- throwaway814 10y ago
  For sure, and even the follow-up on that issue has the IMO totally reasonable explanation + apology for how something that ridiculous came out: http://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2016/08/12/cogdell-unrein-twitter-olympics-trapshooting http://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2016/08/12/cogdell-unrein-twit... The Chicago-based newspaper was trying to emphasize her connection to Chicago (she's from Alaska) and overdid it. Then apologized. Woo, makes sense, no harm no foul.
  - adrianratnapala 10y ago
    I don't see any foul either. When the captain of the Australian cricket team was going out with a famous Australian model, that was news. Even though she was overall a bit less less famous than him. Had she being going out with some otherwise unknown olympian, that also would have been news -- especially if the dude won a medal.
- pygy_ 10y ago
  Testosterone does that, to the extent that there are controversies over women with hyperandrogenism competing professionally. Men just have on average a higher natural supply of anabolic steroids.
intolerant2 10y ago
My biggest complaint of recent years is the reframing of politeness and respect as some form of oppression. Straights whites and men now go around complaining that it's horrible, HORRIBLE that they're "crucified" for being "racist" or "sexist"; when the reality is that they're being mildly chastised (typically with no meaningful consequence) because they've treated another person in a way that the person prefers not to be treated; and they clearly didn't care that the other person was bothered. It's an amazing bit of hypocrisy on the part of these straights whites and men who think that they have a god-given right to be as offensive and rude as they prefer; but that nobody has a right to be offended, or to respond to that rudeness. I get it. It's easy to care about yourself. It's a little harder to care about people near you. And harder still to care about people who you view as different. And damned near impossible to care about people who you've prejudged negatively. But that's how society gets better, richer, and more successful. We'll all be better off if the weak and selfish losers of the world stop pretending that they're "victims" of "political correctness" and realize that they're just boorish jerks who should at least try to stop being jerks. It's a shame that you're too much of a coward to sign your whiny post. The people who are hurt by bigoted culture don't have an option to pretend not to be women, or dark-skinned, or gay. They can't hide it. Be glad that society allows you to be weak. Be glad that society coddles you and allows you to anonymously complain that you're not allowed to be as rude and boorish as you prefer. Be glad that your big problem with society is that when you offend somebody and refuse to apologize for it, a few people will be very slightly mean to you. You are in a place of incredible privilege and you're incapable of realizing it. I don't expect to change your mind. Nobody who writes a post like yours is interested in changing their mind... But I do want to make clear that you're an extremely weak person whose problems are close to non-existent. The fact that you prioritize solving those over solving the problems faced by others also makes clear that you're a really shitty human being who doesn't give a single fuck about people who aren't part of your tribe. Don't worry, your tribe will show up to upvote you and down vote me. That's what HN is for. HN has been explicitly designed to be a safe space for white men in tech to complain about how hard their lives are because of those awful oppressive minorities.
- jolux 10y ago
  I'll up vote that ;). Wish I could do it twice!
lukeschlather 10y ago
I don't think you finished the article. > Clearly can democracy –by definition the majority — tolerate enemies? The question is as follows: “ Would you agree to deny the freedom of speech to every political party that has in its charter the banning the freedom of speech?” Let’s go one step further, “Should a society that has elected to be tolerant be intolerant about intolerance?” So clearly, political correctness has a role to play. The question is, what is PC? The author explicitly suggests that freedom of speech should not apply to adherents of Salafi Islam. So how do we work with this? We have to talk about it, we have to recognize when people are being bigoted or sexist. Yes, enforcing social norms means innocent people may be harmed. But failing to enforce social norms also harms innocent people. I do think the author places undue focus on Islam - the West has bigger internal problems. Christian analogues of Salafism are more likely to get in a position to impose forcible conversion of Muslims than the reverse (as they have in the past.)
- throwaway814 10y ago
  I agree that they should be discussed, I just find the infrastructure for discussing the issues these days makes it much worse. My speech has certainly been improved by polite private reminders from friends over the years. For example "gay", in my hometown, is a ubiquitous synonym for "stupid", but obviously that's unacceptable in retrospect. When I moved away and someone politely noted it to me, I quickly fixed that. But people like these NBC commentators are going to permanently have their names associated with "sexist" as result #1 in Google. And if I ever tried to rationally discuss one of these topics with someone on Facebook, I would 100% be brigaded. Whereas in a group of live people, it's much easier to get to the root of an issue and find common ground. By the way, polite reminder from the HN guidelines: > Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
  - jolux 10y ago
    >But people like these NBC commentators are going to permanently have their names associated with "sexist" as result #1 in Google. And if they apologize for it, people will see they're mature enough to recognize when they've hurt someone and correct it.
chrismcb 10y ago
Pay off my problem with that article is they try to make some of the comments sound stretchiest and claim they would never treat a male the same way. They mention talking about what an athlete wears it how she looks. Yet I hear talk about how a make looks all the time. It recently there was a photo of some female news anchors finding the torso of a topless male Olympian. I'm not saying that is ok, but the sexism happens on both sides
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Wow that's some zealous autocorrect.

tomp 10y ago

That's a really terrible article. Sure, certain complaints are kind-of legitimate (e.g. mentioning someone is someone's wife - although I'm sure same is also often said of men married to famous women), but most just seem to be petty denials of the fact that (the best) men are almost universally better at a given sport than (the best) women.

throwaway814 10y ago
For sure, and even the follow-up on that issue has the IMO totally reasonable explanation + apology for how something that ridiculous came out: http://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2016/08/12/cogdell-unrein-twitter-olympics-trapshooting http://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2016/08/12/cogdell-unrein-twit... The Chicago-based newspaper was trying to emphasize her connection to Chicago (she's from Alaska) and overdid it. Then apologized. Woo, makes sense, no harm no foul.
- adrianratnapala 10y ago
  I don't see any foul either. When the captain of the Australian cricket team was going out with a famous Australian model, that was news. Even though she was overall a bit less less famous than him. Had she being going out with some otherwise unknown olympian, that also would have been news -- especially if the dude won a medal.
pygy_ 10y ago
Testosterone does that, to the extent that there are controversies over women with hyperandrogenism competing professionally. Men just have on average a higher natural supply of anabolic steroids.

intolerant2 10y ago

My biggest complaint of recent years is the reframing of politeness and respect as some form of oppression. Straights whites and men now go around complaining that it's horrible, HORRIBLE that they're "crucified" for being "racist" or "sexist"; when the reality is that they're being mildly chastised (typically with no meaningful consequence) because they've treated another person in a way that the person prefers not to be treated; and they clearly didn't care that the other person was bothered. It's an amazing bit of hypocrisy on the part of these straights whites and men who think that they have a god-given right to be as offensive and rude as they prefer; but that nobody has a right to be offended, or to respond to that rudeness. I get it. It's easy to care about yourself. It's a little harder to care about people near you. And harder still to care about people who you view as different. And damned near impossible to care about people who you've prejudged negatively. But that's how society gets better, richer, and more successful. We'll all be better off if the weak and selfish losers of the world stop pretending that they're "victims" of "political correctness" and realize that they're just boorish jerks who should at least try to stop being jerks. It's a shame that you're too much of a coward to sign your whiny post. The people who are hurt by bigoted culture don't have an option to pretend not to be women, or dark-skinned, or gay. They can't hide it. Be glad that society allows you to be weak. Be glad that society coddles you and allows you to anonymously complain that you're not allowed to be as rude and boorish as you prefer. Be glad that your big problem with society is that when you offend somebody and refuse to apologize for it, a few people will be very slightly mean to you. You are in a place of incredible privilege and you're incapable of realizing it. I don't expect to change your mind. Nobody who writes a post like yours is interested in changing their mind... But I do want to make clear that you're an extremely weak person whose problems are close to non-existent. The fact that you prioritize solving those over solving the problems faced by others also makes clear that you're a really shitty human being who doesn't give a single fuck about people who aren't part of your tribe. Don't worry, your tribe will show up to upvote you and down vote me. That's what HN is for. HN has been explicitly designed to be a safe space for white men in tech to complain about how hard their lives are because of those awful oppressive minorities.

jolux 10y ago
I'll up vote that ;). Wish I could do it twice!

lukeschlather 10y ago

I don't think you finished the article. > Clearly can democracy –by definition the majority — tolerate enemies? The question is as follows: “ Would you agree to deny the freedom of speech to every political party that has in its charter the banning the freedom of speech?” Let’s go one step further, “Should a society that has elected to be tolerant be intolerant about intolerance?” So clearly, political correctness has a role to play. The question is, what is PC? The author explicitly suggests that freedom of speech should not apply to adherents of Salafi Islam. So how do we work with this? We have to talk about it, we have to recognize when people are being bigoted or sexist. Yes, enforcing social norms means innocent people may be harmed. But failing to enforce social norms also harms innocent people. I do think the author places undue focus on Islam - the West has bigger internal problems. Christian analogues of Salafism are more likely to get in a position to impose forcible conversion of Muslims than the reverse (as they have in the past.)

throwaway814 10y ago
I agree that they should be discussed, I just find the infrastructure for discussing the issues these days makes it much worse. My speech has certainly been improved by polite private reminders from friends over the years. For example "gay", in my hometown, is a ubiquitous synonym for "stupid", but obviously that's unacceptable in retrospect. When I moved away and someone politely noted it to me, I quickly fixed that. But people like these NBC commentators are going to permanently have their names associated with "sexist" as result #1 in Google. And if I ever tried to rationally discuss one of these topics with someone on Facebook, I would 100% be brigaded. Whereas in a group of live people, it's much easier to get to the root of an issue and find common ground. By the way, polite reminder from the HN guidelines: > Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
- jolux 10y ago
  >But people like these NBC commentators are going to permanently have their names associated with "sexist" as result #1 in Google. And if they apologize for it, people will see they're mature enough to recognize when they've hurt someone and correct it.

chrismcb 10y ago

Pay off my problem with that article is they try to make some of the comments sound stretchiest and claim they would never treat a male the same way. They mention talking about what an athlete wears it how she looks. Yet I hear talk about how a make looks all the time. It recently there was a photo of some female news anchors finding the torso of a topless male Olympian. I'm not saying that is ok, but the sexism happens on both sides

jessaustin 10y ago
Wow that's some zealous autocorrect.