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META: I know it's wrong to talk about flagging, but I think it's also important for the community for people to try to bring up good reasons to flag posts. I r

META: I know it's wrong to talk about flagging, but I think it's also important for the community for people to try to bring up good reasons to flag posts. I read the linked article, I skimmed many of these comments, and hell if I got anything useful at all from them. Dating standards and decisions about misogyny and important topics, but they're also highly subjective. We HN'ers could argue until the cows come home and not accomplish a damned thing. In addition, it's highly emotionally-charged. A couple commenters tried to take the conversation towards how a company should act in the face of public outrage. Kudos to you guys. You were drowned out, though. I love talking about controversial topics. Heck, I'll post about the existence of God, the reasons for controlling speech, the relationship between organized religion and societal progress -- I really love good conversations among smart people about important things. But I got none of this here. Just a bunch of people making speeches to themselves. Which looked like it could go on forever without either the writers or readers gaining much insight. I flag not based on the topic, but on the quality of the comments I see around the posting. So I had to flag it. Sorry.

Helianthus 13y ago
Provided HN is going to remove categories of posts, I've always advocated banning gender discussion from HN. It's just not the forum for it, and it's the same circle of discussion you see on r/politics. HN is a "cultivated" free speech zone, which is another way to say it's an arbitrarily censored forum where some legitimately objectionable material is filtered away, some good material is lost through false positives, and we _still_ frequently have garbage content and constantly moan about it because the "cultivated" part is supposed to mean we only see gold. To state plainly what I see in this topic: white men talking about feminism presumptuously. White knighting; "as a man, I..."; mansplaining. They're all terms I hate because they totally box out men from participation, which is destructive and actually its own topic. But they apply here.
- Crake 13y ago
  >To state plainly what I see in this topic: white men talking about feminism presumptuously. White knighting; "as a man, I..."; mansplaining. But how do you know the person you're talking to is male? Or white? The person might be womansplaining instead of mansplaining for all you know. Are you assuming they must be white and/or male because they disagree with you? If so, is this because you consider opinions held by people of a certain skin color or biological sex to be innately inferior to others? Something to think about.

Helianthus 13y ago

Provided HN is going to remove categories of posts, I've always advocated banning gender discussion from HN. It's just not the forum for it, and it's the same circle of discussion you see on r/politics. HN is a "cultivated" free speech zone, which is another way to say it's an arbitrarily censored forum where some legitimately objectionable material is filtered away, some good material is lost through false positives, and we _still_ frequently have garbage content and constantly moan about it because the "cultivated" part is supposed to mean we only see gold. To state plainly what I see in this topic: white men talking about feminism presumptuously. White knighting; "as a man, I..."; mansplaining. They're all terms I hate because they totally box out men from participation, which is destructive and actually its own topic. But they apply here.

Crake 13y ago
>To state plainly what I see in this topic: white men talking about feminism presumptuously. White knighting; "as a man, I..."; mansplaining. But how do you know the person you're talking to is male? Or white? The person might be womansplaining instead of mansplaining for all you know. Are you assuming they must be white and/or male because they disagree with you? If so, is this because you consider opinions held by people of a certain skin color or biological sex to be innately inferior to others? Something to think about.