3 ms·

> So when five million mostly men step over my body in the gutter and go "Meh, not my problem she can't afford to eat. It's not like I'm sleeping with her." it'

> So when five million mostly men step over my body in the gutter and go "Meh, not my problem she can't afford to eat. It's not like I'm sleeping with her." it's pretty freaking dehumanizing. Those same men also step over male bodies in the gutter because of their same lack of utility. They dehumanize both sexes with equality.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
That's just more BS excuses. I'm not going to argue this further. It always boils down to "La la la, not listening!" There is always some justification for how it somehow isn't sexist that I cannot successfully use HN as a means to establish an adequate income, even though plenty of men do so and even though I appear to be the top ranked woman here and it is an overwhelmingly male space and so forth. But I still get told over and over and over "Well, that's not evidence of sexism. You're just basically a Loser." Uh huh. Whatevs.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  Sex aside (like that's an option you're given) most guys are compulsive about trying equate their experience with yours. That's actually a human thing (now I'm equating and I threw in an 'actually') but it's so, so, so, much more ubiquitous with guys+internet. The steps between me doing that by default and sometimes not doing that - well, it was a lot of steps. Or time. Something. I'm a slow learn so I have to grind away at things repeatedly before I really get a handle.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    I might be misreading your message. I'm a bit short of sleep and such at the moment. But if I weren't already extremely good about assuming good intentions and interpreting the actions of others through a lens of benign and reasonable motives, I couldn't have stayed this long. The problem is that me understanding why guys do the things they do and yadda keeps the focus on guys and how important their feelings and what not are and fails to move anything forward in terms of me resolving my very real issues with trying to make ends meet. I spent a ton of time in therapy because I was sexually abused as a kid and I have thought a lot about it and if just sleeping my way to a solution would work, I would have no qualms about doing that. The problem is that I don't get treated like an actual person whether the answer to sex is "yes" or "no." In neither case does it ever lead to me being able to establish some kind of earned income for something other than sex work, in essence. Honest to god, if just sleeping with a guy would open career doors for me, I would take that option in like a heartbeat. But it doesn't work. (See Theranos for evidence of how very poorly that works.) My last two serious boyfriends were supposedly potential career contacts and they never did the first thing for my career aspirations. Once a guy gets sexually involved with me, sex is all it is. And if he doesn't get sexually involved with me, in most cases that means he doesn't get involved with me at all. (And I don't think that's "just me." Again: See Theranos for an example of how poorly it works to intentionally try to open doors for your career by sleeping with men with money.) Most men do not want to support my work, promote my work, discuss my work, open doors for me career-wise, etc etc etc etc etc. And that leaves me unable to establish an income while having to listen to the same really lousy explanations, dismissals, sympathetic noises and so forth year in and year out while my income barely budges.
    - olivejun 6y ago
      You’re getting some really bad responses to your comments, I definitely hear what you’re saying. I’m aspiring to be in tech to get out of homelessness but I wonder if I can even pull it off as a woman.
      - DoreenMichele 6y ago
        I began doing remote work while homeless. That was enormously helpful in getting past some of those hurdles, to some degree. I run r/GigWorks and a zillion other little subreddits and I run a bunch of homeless websites. If you are not familiar, Street Life Solutions has a list of some of the most pertinent ones in the sidebar: https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/ https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/ Pocket Puter has this link on its Links page: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JfNAbUX_lN9K3MCNHO15GJtJ5qpk7H9Cl3xTBwv2FR8/htmlview https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JfNAbUX_lN9K3MCNHO15... I"m actually getting a surprising amount of support in this discussion. Things used to be a lot rougher for me on HN. At least some of the worst and ugliest stuff tends to get fairly promptly flagged to death these days.

DoreenMichele 6y ago

That's just more BS excuses. I'm not going to argue this further. It always boils down to "La la la, not listening!" There is always some justification for how it somehow isn't sexist that I cannot successfully use HN as a means to establish an adequate income, even though plenty of men do so and even though I appear to be the top ranked woman here and it is an overwhelmingly male space and so forth. But I still get told over and over and over "Well, that's not evidence of sexism. You're just basically a Loser." Uh huh. Whatevs.

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
Sex aside (like that's an option you're given) most guys are compulsive about trying equate their experience with yours. That's actually a human thing (now I'm equating and I threw in an 'actually') but it's so, so, so, much more ubiquitous with guys+internet. The steps between me doing that by default and sometimes not doing that - well, it was a lot of steps. Or time. Something. I'm a slow learn so I have to grind away at things repeatedly before I really get a handle.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  I might be misreading your message. I'm a bit short of sleep and such at the moment. But if I weren't already extremely good about assuming good intentions and interpreting the actions of others through a lens of benign and reasonable motives, I couldn't have stayed this long. The problem is that me understanding why guys do the things they do and yadda keeps the focus on guys and how important their feelings and what not are and fails to move anything forward in terms of me resolving my very real issues with trying to make ends meet. I spent a ton of time in therapy because I was sexually abused as a kid and I have thought a lot about it and if just sleeping my way to a solution would work, I would have no qualms about doing that. The problem is that I don't get treated like an actual person whether the answer to sex is "yes" or "no." In neither case does it ever lead to me being able to establish some kind of earned income for something other than sex work, in essence. Honest to god, if just sleeping with a guy would open career doors for me, I would take that option in like a heartbeat. But it doesn't work. (See Theranos for evidence of how very poorly that works.) My last two serious boyfriends were supposedly potential career contacts and they never did the first thing for my career aspirations. Once a guy gets sexually involved with me, sex is all it is. And if he doesn't get sexually involved with me, in most cases that means he doesn't get involved with me at all. (And I don't think that's "just me." Again: See Theranos for an example of how poorly it works to intentionally try to open doors for your career by sleeping with men with money.) Most men do not want to support my work, promote my work, discuss my work, open doors for me career-wise, etc etc etc etc etc. And that leaves me unable to establish an income while having to listen to the same really lousy explanations, dismissals, sympathetic noises and so forth year in and year out while my income barely budges.
  - olivejun 6y ago
    You’re getting some really bad responses to your comments, I definitely hear what you’re saying. I’m aspiring to be in tech to get out of homelessness but I wonder if I can even pull it off as a woman.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      I began doing remote work while homeless. That was enormously helpful in getting past some of those hurdles, to some degree. I run r/GigWorks and a zillion other little subreddits and I run a bunch of homeless websites. If you are not familiar, Street Life Solutions has a list of some of the most pertinent ones in the sidebar: https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/ https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/ Pocket Puter has this link on its Links page: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JfNAbUX_lN9K3MCNHO15GJtJ5qpk7H9Cl3xTBwv2FR8/htmlview https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JfNAbUX_lN9K3MCNHO15... I"m actually getting a surprising amount of support in this discussion. Things used to be a lot rougher for me on HN. At least some of the worst and ugliest stuff tends to get fairly promptly flagged to death these days.