4 ms·

It’s not really a ridiculous assumption; Thailand and the Philippines both have large sex tourism industries. In particular, for the past few years there’s been

It’s not really a ridiculous assumption; Thailand and the Philippines both have large sex tourism industries. In particular, for the past few years there’s been a large focus on illegal child sex tourism in those places. Just explaining why your comment might have rubbed people the wrong way, though you might not have deserved it.

csomar 8y ago
No it is ridiculous. You just made an assumption and an accusation. While both these countries have a big sex tourism scene, I have found many of the girls I dated not really aware of it. Most of them were attracted to the different physic and the novelty of dating a foreigner. Sure it doesn’t help the local men but well, I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong here. That’s something that really bother me on HN. Where people play judges with no relevant facts.
- jonathanyc 8y ago
  Dude, no one is accusing you of being a sex tourist, and at the same time it was absolutely not a ridiculous assumption until your clarifying comment; I don’t know what else to say. It’s just applying Bayesian statistics. You seem to be taking this a bit too personally. If someone assumed that a school shooter was a man, that would not be a ridiculous assumption, and I would not be offended even though I am a man and not a school shooter. Chill out.
  - tripletao 8y ago
    > It’s just applying Bayesian statistics. You seem to be taking this a bit too personally. When store security "apply Bayesian statistics" to black shoppers, the shoppers tend to take it personally. I don't see what makes the assumption here more okay. I'd venture that most people wouldn't take the suspicion that their relationship with their partner was in fact a commercial sex transaction particularly well. And your example is not too parallel. Do you not see any difference between assuming that some stranger who did a school shooting shares your gender, and assuming that you personally are a sex tourist? I read a story from a white guy somewhere in SE Asia who was confronted by a Western tourist who'd read a few too many Nicholas Kristof columns, and attempted to separate him from the child he was surely about to rape. It was his daughter...
    - jonathanyc 8y ago
      It doesn’t seem you’re very familiar with either this area of ethics or with statistics, so I don’t think this can be a productive discussion. I’ll just note that you’re seriously comparing someone posting “go to Asia because it’s easier to have sex there” with a black person walking into a store. It sounds to me like you are just disproportionately sensitive about this because you feel like in this case you are the one being profiled. On top of that you’re equating harassing a shopper to not even accusing someone of being a sex tourist, just pointing out that sex tourism is a thing. You need to step back and look at this in perspective. That’s it from me.
      - tripletao 8y ago
        "Have sex" is pretty clearly a proxy for "form some kind of intimate relationship with a woman" here. If it were just about the sex, a local prostitute would be more cost-effective than relocation to Thailand. I'm not sure what here makes you think I don't know math, and that's not something I'm often accused of. The point at which sex tourism is a serious problem that deserves attention comes well before the point where any foreign man there can reasonably be accused of it. You could have raised the issue in a way that made it clear you meant no suggestion of that against anyone here. Most people still take "you might not have deserved [to be suspected of being a pedo]" as an accusation--"might" implies "might not". If he'd said "New York City" instead of "Thailand", then would his comment have been fine? Must good honorable foreign men write off a country entirely once enough other foreign men do something bad? What's the tipping point? Is there some prostitution rate and GDP per capita at which Bangkok will be okay again? Do the thresholds vary with the man's race and income? Race only? > It sounds to me like you are just disproportionately sensitive about this because you feel like in this case you are the one being profiled. This was my first post in response to this story. So I'm not sure why I'd feel like I was being profiled, unless this is some kind of implication that I am (oops, "might be") a sex tourist too. I don't and have never lived in SE Asia, or had sex with anyone there. I get that you think I'm wrong. You've expressed this clearly, but you've made no attempt to explain why. I'd venture that if you stepped back and looked at this in perspective, you'd find a more difficult moral landscape than you currently perceive. ETA: Seriously, you're dancing around the idea that a poster here is a child sex tourist--an active pedophile, a man who rapes children, a criminal rightly considered among the worst imaginable. If there's no reason to suspect that he's a child sex tourist, then why was your (accurate) statement that that's disproportionately common in Thailand relevant? Given the opportunity, the closest you got to retracting the implication was to say he "might not have deserved" it. And you think I'm wrong to compare this to a false accusation of shoplifting? A foreign man living in Bangkok really is more likely to be a sex tourist than average, just as a black shopper is more likely to be a shoplifter. (Yes, disparate enforcement against black vs. white shoplifters skews the raw statistics against black people. No, this doesn't explain the full difference. Controlling for income and other factors removes a lot of the difference; but store security doesn't have that information, so that's not relevant.) I think that's the "Bayesian statistics" you're talking about. The point is that these real, nonzero correlations do not justify making the lives of entire classes of people worse. I think you owe the poster an apology, not dismissive instructions to "chill".
- meowface 8y ago
  You just said lonely men should move to those countries because it's easier to have sex there. The leap from that to "sex tourism" is not big.
donttrack 8y ago
Yes it’s ridiculous. Stop this nonsense

csomar 8y ago

No it is ridiculous. You just made an assumption and an accusation. While both these countries have a big sex tourism scene, I have found many of the girls I dated not really aware of it. Most of them were attracted to the different physic and the novelty of dating a foreigner. Sure it doesn’t help the local men but well, I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong here. That’s something that really bother me on HN. Where people play judges with no relevant facts.

jonathanyc 8y ago
Dude, no one is accusing you of being a sex tourist, and at the same time it was absolutely not a ridiculous assumption until your clarifying comment; I don’t know what else to say. It’s just applying Bayesian statistics. You seem to be taking this a bit too personally. If someone assumed that a school shooter was a man, that would not be a ridiculous assumption, and I would not be offended even though I am a man and not a school shooter. Chill out.
- tripletao 8y ago
  > It’s just applying Bayesian statistics. You seem to be taking this a bit too personally. When store security "apply Bayesian statistics" to black shoppers, the shoppers tend to take it personally. I don't see what makes the assumption here more okay. I'd venture that most people wouldn't take the suspicion that their relationship with their partner was in fact a commercial sex transaction particularly well. And your example is not too parallel. Do you not see any difference between assuming that some stranger who did a school shooting shares your gender, and assuming that you personally are a sex tourist? I read a story from a white guy somewhere in SE Asia who was confronted by a Western tourist who'd read a few too many Nicholas Kristof columns, and attempted to separate him from the child he was surely about to rape. It was his daughter...
  - jonathanyc 8y ago
    It doesn’t seem you’re very familiar with either this area of ethics or with statistics, so I don’t think this can be a productive discussion. I’ll just note that you’re seriously comparing someone posting “go to Asia because it’s easier to have sex there” with a black person walking into a store. It sounds to me like you are just disproportionately sensitive about this because you feel like in this case you are the one being profiled. On top of that you’re equating harassing a shopper to not even accusing someone of being a sex tourist, just pointing out that sex tourism is a thing. You need to step back and look at this in perspective. That’s it from me.
    - tripletao 8y ago
      "Have sex" is pretty clearly a proxy for "form some kind of intimate relationship with a woman" here. If it were just about the sex, a local prostitute would be more cost-effective than relocation to Thailand. I'm not sure what here makes you think I don't know math, and that's not something I'm often accused of. The point at which sex tourism is a serious problem that deserves attention comes well before the point where any foreign man there can reasonably be accused of it. You could have raised the issue in a way that made it clear you meant no suggestion of that against anyone here. Most people still take "you might not have deserved [to be suspected of being a pedo]" as an accusation--"might" implies "might not". If he'd said "New York City" instead of "Thailand", then would his comment have been fine? Must good honorable foreign men write off a country entirely once enough other foreign men do something bad? What's the tipping point? Is there some prostitution rate and GDP per capita at which Bangkok will be okay again? Do the thresholds vary with the man's race and income? Race only? > It sounds to me like you are just disproportionately sensitive about this because you feel like in this case you are the one being profiled. This was my first post in response to this story. So I'm not sure why I'd feel like I was being profiled, unless this is some kind of implication that I am (oops, "might be") a sex tourist too. I don't and have never lived in SE Asia, or had sex with anyone there. I get that you think I'm wrong. You've expressed this clearly, but you've made no attempt to explain why. I'd venture that if you stepped back and looked at this in perspective, you'd find a more difficult moral landscape than you currently perceive. ETA: Seriously, you're dancing around the idea that a poster here is a child sex tourist--an active pedophile, a man who rapes children, a criminal rightly considered among the worst imaginable. If there's no reason to suspect that he's a child sex tourist, then why was your (accurate) statement that that's disproportionately common in Thailand relevant? Given the opportunity, the closest you got to retracting the implication was to say he "might not have deserved" it. And you think I'm wrong to compare this to a false accusation of shoplifting? A foreign man living in Bangkok really is more likely to be a sex tourist than average, just as a black shopper is more likely to be a shoplifter. (Yes, disparate enforcement against black vs. white shoplifters skews the raw statistics against black people. No, this doesn't explain the full difference. Controlling for income and other factors removes a lot of the difference; but store security doesn't have that information, so that's not relevant.) I think that's the "Bayesian statistics" you're talking about. The point is that these real, nonzero correlations do not justify making the lives of entire classes of people worse. I think you owe the poster an apology, not dismissive instructions to "chill".
meowface 8y ago
You just said lonely men should move to those countries because it's easier to have sex there. The leap from that to "sex tourism" is not big.

donttrack 8y ago

Yes it’s ridiculous. Stop this nonsense