9 ms·
Really? What do you want?
We want women to shut up and stop telling us that there's a problem with how we behave, because it's rude to tell people there's some
Really? What do you want?
We want women to shut up and stop telling us that there's a problem with how we behave, because it's rude to tell people there's something innately wrong with their behavior. Also it takes so much time and effort on our parts to try and behave like better people that it hardly seems like we should bother.
The problem, for many people, is not that the issue is being handled indelicately. It's that the issue is being brought up at all. Aren't there already systems that are supposed to handle discrimination, in private, so that we don't have to witness it being discussed firsthand? Why are people so self-centered that they have to make every innocent joke about politics or gender or society? I just thought it was funny that Dave said something that sounds like sex talk, and wanted all of you to know! And don't you know that men are discriminated against just as much as women?
As you can see I've got perfectly rational explanations for why I'm so irritated by women calling out sexist behaviors. I want them to stop calling things sexist so that I can stop worrying about their feelings.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
> We want women to shut up and stop telling us that there's a problem with how we behave...
> As you can see I've got perfectly rational explanations for why I'm so irritated by women calling out sexist behaviors.
> I want them to stop calling things sexist so that I can stop worrying about their feelings.
> I just thought it was funny that Dave said something that sounds like sex talk, and wanted all of you to know! And don't you know that men are discriminated against just as much as women?
I honestly can't tell if you are being serious or just being very convincing at acting like an immature brat. Considering you're on HN, I'll make the assumption that you are in fact more mature than this, and suggest you update your comment to make it a tad more clear that you are in fact just mocking people that actually think this way.
That being said, it's sad that I could actually see someone really believing this.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
I have a neuro-atypicality that makes it very hard to tell when people do not literally mean what they say. That atypicality is shared by many programmers.
I hope that you do not receive many mistaken down votes from people who mis-understand your comments!
LOL - this is my fav comment on this thread.
I feel like I have seen a shift in the comments on women in tech related articles on HN over the past few weeks. 2 weeks ago I had a really hard time reading the comments because they seemed either hate-filled or ignorant (like the comment above is mocking) but I feel like lately the discussion has become more intelligent. Or is that just wishful thinking on my part?
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
Perfect example of Poe's Law :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
Dear Sir,
We noticed you have made some potentially inflammatory comments directed towards women. We have started to monitor your account and will shut it down if you continue to use this type of language. Please read the following guidelines that explain how to correctly discuss and think about these issues:
"What things are most useful for men to keep in mind when discussing theories or topics relating to gender?" http://www.quora.com/What-things-are-most-useful-for-men-to-keep-in-mind-when-discussing-theories-or-topics-relating-to-gender http://www.quora.com/What-things-are-most-useful-for-men-to-...
"Derailing for Dummies": http://derailingfordummies.com/ http://derailingfordummies.com/
We hope we will not have to contact you again about further violations.
Thank you.
Yes! Also, what's up with Miss Manners suggesting other ways for people to be polite? Why is she keeping me down with her "chew with your mouth closed" and "use the toilet paper, not the hand towels" bullshit! No one can police me! The constitution say so! I DO WHAT I WANT!
Or, and I'm just thinking out loud here, we could recognize that, especially in professional contexts, we actually want to behave towards our colleagues in ways that are polite and respectful. And maybe we could also recognize that our society has finally been reducing institutional sexism over the last century or so, and that there's still some work left to do.
How does this satiric post help at all? We all know what bigots sound like. We don't need a demonstration. You haven't pointed out anything profound. You haven't suggested any way to fix the situation. You have only distracted people who couldn't tell whether or not you were serious and wasted readers' time.
How do you define sexist?
Do you define sexist to mean the belief that one gender should be able to violate the rights of the other? That one gender is better than the other?
That one gender is different from the other?
Under your definition, why is sexism bad?
That being said, it's sad that I could actually see someone really believing this.
That being said, and this being the internet, do you realize how silly you look to other cultures that don't give a flying duck about those so-called issues, and can take a joke?
(And it's not like people from those other cultures don't worry about the larger issues re: equality, sexism etc, it's that "that's what she said" it's NOT where they are at all).
You wanna do something positive? How about doing something for the millions of homeless people in your own country? --now, THAT's a discrimination if I ever saw one. How come I see people tirelessly blogging about those non issues and never about those kind of things?
According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, there were 643,067 sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons nationwide as of January 2009. Additionally, about 1.56 million people used an emergency shelter or a transitional housing program during the 12-month period between October 1, 2008 and September 30, 2009.
A random joke (say, a picture of a girl in bikini is some presentation) is "sexism" and "prevents more women from going to programming conferences"?
Well, not having a bloody house is social exclusion, and prevents homeless people for getting shelter, proper rest, care, running water, electricity, reduces chances of getting a job, and also prevents them from going to programming conferences. Men AND women.
(Not that I take any offense with the woman writing the bot. She seems like she can take a joke fine, and she did a joke in response -- it's all those other people blowing non-issues out of proportion that get me).
Prudes...
Yet another common trope in gender discussions is this idea that people shouldn't complain about sexism because there are more important things to worry about.
We are complex machines that are capable of worrying about multiple cultural issues at a time. This is an issue. If there are things you'd rather us focus on, write a blog post, start a thread, make something. Don't try and derail this one, because it's relevant to many, many people, and it's a serious issue in this industry.
>Yet another common trope in gender discussions is this idea that people shouldn't complain about sexism because there are more important things to worry about.
Haven't thought of it that way, but sounds like a reasonable general guideline: don't worry about minor things when there are important things that mess with your life and your society.
Oh, and I see what you did there --by adding "sexism"--, whereas my comment was about issues like the "That's what she said" in the story and such, which I'd hardly call sexist at all.
It's not like I said we don't have to worry about men and women not receiving equal pay, or about rape, or freedom of choice, etc, which would be REAL sexist issues to worry about.
>We are complex machines that are capable of worrying about multiple cultural issues at a time.
Really? That must be way every fifth post is about how to focus, how the "get things done", etc. Well, if we are "capable", we sure don't seem like it. Check those kinds of blogs: people that post on such things rarely post on more important issues.
Besides, even if you are "capable of worrying about multiple cultural issues", by worrying about both trivial and important things at the same time, you confuse your priorities or get paralyzed.
>Don't try and derail this one, because it's relevant to many, many people, and it's a serious issue in this industry.
It's only a "serious issue" in that it's being discussed a lot. It's not a serious issue in its manifestation or it's consequences at all.
As for women in IT, well, ever considered they just don't like it that much? It's not like being a man or a woman only affects your tastes towards some industry due to the sexism (or "sexism") in it.
Besides possible differences in inherent tastes (due to evolutionary traits), society also shapes men and women differently. For example, women being given barbie dolls and men Lego by their parents might be a much more important reason for them not liking IT, than any sexism in the IT industry.
When students pick up a university course, for example, they hardly have any idea about how the industry is. In my country at least, they don't have any idea at all --almost no one works as an internet or similar anywhere before graduating from university. Still, that doesn't prevent women/men applying to study IT in university being around 20:80. Other fields are Math, Medicine and Physics, which are like 50:50, and Biology, with is like 60:40. You think any of these has anything to do with the sexism in each industry? Like, male doctors are less sexist or something?
> don't worry about minor things when there are important things that mess with your life and your society
Important things like women making less money than men, being more subjected to media objectification, being the target of laws that want to deny them rights because we still have a problem accepting that women are exactly equal to us? Important things like us dismissing their complaints about this shit without it occurring to us that perhaps our dismissal is exactly the problem?
> Really? That must be way every fifth post is about how to focus, how the "get things done", etc. Well, if we are "capable", we sure don't seem like it. Check those kinds of blogs: people that post on such things rarely post on more important issues.
Learning how to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish, that's important. Learning what's wrong with our culture and how we can help fix the problem, that's important too. There are people who write about both subjects at the same time, but I see nothing wrong with people finding their niche. In any event, the focus of Hacker News is discussing relevant issues, and this is a doozy of a relevant issue.
> It's not a serious issue in its manifestation or it's consequences at all.
Countless women who have been affected by this would disagree with you. Countless men too.
> As for women in IT, well, ever considered they just don't like it that much?
Ever considered they don't like it because people like you see no problem with treating them this way?
> society also shapes men and women differently.
Exactly!
> For example, women being given barbie dolls and men Lego by their parents might be a much more important reason for them not liking IT, than any sexism in the IT industry.
Err... not exactly! Or rather, gross oversimplification!
There's a problem with women being conditioned not to think of themselves the same way that men do. But there's also a problem with men being conditioned to think of women the wrong way. Ads that tell women they need to look pretty to attract men also tell men that it's okay to think of women this way.
Even if the problem was as simple as "women don't like IT because they're given Barbies," the solution is not to shrug your shoulders and say "it's society, nothing we can do about it," because we are society. The solution is to listen to women when they complain about things and realize that the reasons they give for not liking this bullshit are very, very, very, very, very good reasons. That yes, we were conditioned to behave in shitty ways, and that we should stop behaving so shittily.
> Yet another common trope in gender discussions is this idea that people shouldn't complain about sexism because there are more important things to worry about.
But Batista is complaining about (what he at least suggests to be) sexism, just in another area with more serious consequences.
It is better, but I am still disappointed.
What the author did was clever and interesting, and the reaction of this highest-ranked thread has been to steal the discussion from, say, the general application of a female hacker's idea and instead to focus on the psychological contusions of a group of guys we don't know, scarcely care about, and will probably never meet. And yet we are not even talking about how to convince them not to react like this: we have all established that their reaction is problematic, would someone mind suggesting a way to change it?
At least the problem is no longer sexism but laziness: changing people is hard, complaining about them is easy. Back to work! Jeez.
Good point. I was aiming, with my comment, to pre-empt a lot of the responses which usually show up in a discussion like this. I don't think what I said was a derail: The biggest obstacle in these discussions is simply that people don't realize this is a problem. Nobody wants to be sexist, and nobody responds well to suggestions that their behaviors were unintentionally sexist, especially if they don't immediately see the connection to sexism themselves.
What we need is transparency and awareness. The more people realize that their actions might have unintentional and unpleasant consequences, the better they'll be at checking their behavior and making adjustments. It was an incredible series of community discussions on MetaFilter that made me reconsider my own behavior – just two years ago, I'd be the one arguing that this sort of reaction was unnecessary – so I know firsthand how useful simply talking about these issues can be.
Those threads, by the way, are http://metatalk.metafilter.com/15281/Discussion-Point http://metatalk.metafilter.com/15281/Discussion-Point and http://www.metafilter.com/85667/Hi-Whatcha-reading http://www.metafilter.com/85667/Hi-Whatcha-reading, and each branches out into a thread or two more. They're very long – I spent a good week reading them – but they're fascinating conversations that took place in a community quite similar to this one, in which every possible argument is brought up and some incredibly eloquent comments are made by women who are affected personally by issues like this. (The first thread takes a little while to steer towards that conversation, but that was the one which enthralled me.)
>Nobody wants to be sexist, and nobody responds well to suggestions that their behaviors were unintentionally sexist
Maybe some of Jay Smooth's TED Talk on racism (http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxHampshireCollege-Jay-Smooth)could http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxHampshireCollege-Jay-Smoo... apply to sexism.
(Yes, quick quick, down-vote the heretic -- we haven't progressed much from Salem, have we?)
>Important things like women making less money than men, being more subjected to media objectification, being the target of laws that want to deny them rights because we still have a problem accepting that women are exactly equal to us?
Funny how you seem to have the missed the part where I SPECIFICALLY write: "It's not like I said we don't have to worry about men and women not receiving equal pay, or about rape, or freedom of choice, etc, which would be REAL sexist issues to worry about".
I.e, what I wrote is that THOSE are important issues, and "sexism AS IN "that's what she said" jokes and in "conference slides with some bikini-clad woman" IS NOT.
>Ever considered they don't like it because people like you see no problem with treating them this way?
No, because I have counter-examples, of women picking professions where they are treated the same or even worse, in much larger percentages.
Consider this: is every profession that women generally avoid a sexist one? Or do women also avoid some professions for other reasons?
Also consider this: could there also be some feminine and masculine side? (At least psychologists seem to agree). We know that hormones, for example, have a large influence on our behavior, re violence, introspection, sexual interest, etc, acting as regulators.
So could women also be more inclined towards some types of professions as women?
Can you get 5 year old girls interest in Star Wars as easily as 5 year old boys? (In general, not outliers). I don't think so --judging from the children I know, including mine, they already have their preferences re: cartoons. So, why wouldn't they also have re: professions?
Are those things never considered? If so, why? Because they are a "forbidden thought" since we must consider everyone the same? Well, being equal (a social ideal) is not the same as necessarily being the same. Well, I like empirical thinking, I don't care about "thought crimes".
>Even if the problem was as simple as "women don't like IT because they're given Barbies," the solution is not to shrug your shoulders and say "it's society, nothing we can do about it," because we are society.
I didn't said that, though. What I said was that "if the problem was as simple as 'women don't like IT because they're given Barbies'" then we shouldn't address non-problems, like "that's what she said jokes".
The interface design problem here is that people are trying to express two things with one button: A) I disagree strongly, and B) that is a poor contribution to the discussion.
Personally, I'm going with both A and B for Batista. Some people come to a sexism discussion like fundies come to an evolution discussion. The point isn't to learn something and perhaps come away with a new view. It's to argue until the other people go find something better to do, so that the arguer can feel victorious and avoid having their bubble punctured.
When Batista jumped in with a standard technique for derailing the discussion, I suspected he was not interested in actual discussion. From his further replies, I'm sure of it. Life's too short to waste time talking with people like that. And if he's not at a discussion site to have an actual discussion, downvoting seems entirely reasonable to me.
>Some people come to a sexism discussion like fundies come to an evolution discussion. The point isn't to learn something and perhaps come away with a new view.
Noticed how you equate the issue of sexism with evolution theory?
To imply, of course, that those that happen to disagree about the importance of sexism are NUTS, and that the importance of sexism in keeping women away from IT is as indisputable as a scientific theory.
So much for YOU coming here "to learn something and perhaps come away with a new view".
So, when you say that the ideal is for one to come to a discussion "to learn something and perhaps come away with a new view", you only mean it for those with opposing views.
Because YOUR view is a priori as irrefutable as evolution --your simile--.
>When Batista jumped in with a standard technique for derailing the discussion, I suspected he was not interested in actual discussion.
Let me see.
1) I come in the discussion with an opposing view.
2) You held that I'm akin to someone coming to an evolution discussion with an opposing view --i.e a nutjob arguing against science.
3) I provide several arguments, mention some logical explanations about how things could not be so, etc.
4) Instead of replying in specifics, you resort to ad-hominens. Batista this, and Batista that.
5) Notice how all your message above is devoice of specifics, even on the meta-level of discussing my comments:
= = = = =
"Personally, I'm going with both A and B for Batista."
No mentioning why.
"Some people come to a sexism discussion like fundies come to an evolution discussion. The point isn't to learn something and perhaps come away with a new view. It's to argue until the other people go find something better to do, so that the arguer can feel victorious and avoid having their bubble punctured."
No mention of how that applies to Batista, plus the vulgar comparison of anyone disagreeing with the current topic to someone disagreeing with evolution/science.
"When Batista jumped in with a standard technique for derailing the discussion, I suspected he was not interested in actual discussion."
No mention of what that technique was. Saying something besides what everybody else says?
"From his further replies, I'm sure of it."
Again, no mention of specifics.
"Life's too short to waste time talking with people like that."
Again, no specifics as to what is "that".
= = = = =
And you have the nerve to say that it's me that "I'm not interested in conversation"?
Talk about blame the victim.
You're true on one thing, though: "life's too short to waste time talking with people like that".
> He expresses an opinion that is contrary to what other people are saying and he gets down-voted into oblivion.
He's being downvoted not because of his opinion, but because of the way he chose to present it. And, he's whining about downvotes. Read what he's writing. It's downright rude.
> I'll be down-voted myself anyway for even daring to defend someone’s right to express their opinion however.
No, and suggesting such is fairly dramatic. However, the fact that you spend 2 paragraphs on the "plight" of your posts' voting trend is pointless.
> So god damn it learn to argue with people properly instead of just trying to silence them.
Learn to discuss matters like an adult, and you won't have this issue.
> Also, down-voting people as you disagree with them verbally is like gagging them whilst you debate them.
IIRC, your vote doesn't count if the person is responding to you, or you are replying to them. So, enhance your calm.
>Read what he's writing. It's downright rude.
Can you point to the rude parts? Or is that too much to ask?
>Learn to discuss matters like an adult, and you won't have this issue.
Actually most of the discussion on the issue is like that of touchy 20 year olds.
Adults dont "down-vote" on disagreement.
> Can you point to the rude parts? Or is that too much to ask?
Any of his comments in this thread are rude. Practically each on seethed with immaturity and rudeness for the other people in the thread. Any particular part? Yeah, the parts where he was commenting.
Rude is obviously subjective, but tied to social norms. It's like me calling a woman a "fucking bitch" is rude based on social norms, not because "fucking bitch" itself is rude. So, just consider that before you try to suggest that "what he said was clearly not rude or immature." We can obviously go back and forth all day long and get no where.
> Actually most of the discussion on the issue is like that of touchy 20 year olds. Adults dont "down-vote" on disagreement.
Well, I'm fairly confused now. First, I'm under the impression that a 20-year old is an adult. Secondly, I agree that adults don't down-vote on disagreement. I'm confused because if most of the discussion is like that of adults, and adults don't down-vote on mere disagreement, what's the issue? I sincerely think you were making a mountain out of a mole hill.
Yes, there will be people who down-vote because they disagree. There are also people, like me, who will see that and correct it should we feel the down-votes are not necessary, even if we disagree. It's self correcting that way. Hell, people up-vote even when they do disagree, if only because the comment is thoughtful.
I think the issue isn't people disagreeing on a subject. I think it's people disagreeing on what constitutes having a mature conversation. You obviously disagree with others' assessments.
>>Can you point to the rude parts? Or is that too much to ask?
> Any of his comments in this thread are rude. Practically each on seethed with immaturity and rudeness for the other people in the thread. Any particular part? Yeah, the parts where he was commenting.
So, you accuse the other guy of being rude, but when asked to give a specific example, you resort to platitudes and generalities. Thanks for the mature contribution.
> So, you accuse the other guy of being rude
You
> but when asked to give a specific example, you resort to platitudes and generalities.
You first reply was littered with immaturity and insults. Everyone after that is combative, abrasive, and immature.
Considering your contribution up to this point, I've put in far too much effort already.
> Thanks for the mature contribution.
You're welcome. At the very least, you can recognize maturity in others, and that's a starting point. =)
Edit: I just realized your complaining about people complaining about sexism when there are "more important" things like homelessness. The irony is quite funny.
> You first reply was littered with immaturity and insults.
Sorry, I tried to verify that, but it looks like it is your comment, the one mentioning an immature brat, that sounds at least very arrogant and condescending, if not rude. I honestly fail to notice such qualities or insults in batista's comments down the thread after yours (although complaints about being downvoted he certainly could omit). Though it might be my insufficient understanding of language or culture, so I'd be grateful if you point out the offending parts.