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I'm actually really surprised they seem to think that the HN community is anti-sexist. Compared to 4chan, maybe, but from my experience it isn't at all.

by duairc 13y ago

minimaxir 13y ago
There have been a few incidents where discussions about gender issues have been very quickly flagged off the front page. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495950
- Nav_Panel 13y ago
  I don't understand why the post you linked would have been flagged. I see nothing at all wrong with it.
  - minimaxir 13y ago
    That's the problem. It was at #3, then immediately dropped off. (see the comments)
  - redthrowaway 13y ago
    It would have tripped the flamewar detector. If a submission engenders (get it?) a flame war in the comments, it gets buried automatically.
sliverstorm 13y ago
The HN community appears to have embittered members of both sides of that argument.
sbierwagen 13y ago
4chan considers reddit to be a hotbed of radical feminist activism, solely due to /r/SRS. Of course, they'd probably say the same of any community where you use something close to real names, like HN.
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
  /r/SRS is hardly a hotbed of radfem activism either. It's a circlejerk where people post posts from other parts of reddit and laugh depressingly at how awful they are
saraid216 13y ago
As someone who's played a few rounds in HN discussions on sexism, I'll put it this way: on HN, there are a decent number of legitimate feminists. There are enough to put up a fight when a fight needs to be had. When a discussion thread starts getting bad, there are enough of us that you can usually expect to see someone step in and not feel completely alone in engaging. Even better, a decent number of those who are willing to speak out are also capable of doing it reasonably and coherently with an eye towards explaining the issues understandably. That doesn't mean the people they're talking with are convinced; people are almost never convinced like that. And best of all, we aren't downvoted into oblivion when we take such stands. I've gotten some significant chunks of karma for being the feminist in a thread. If all of this labels us "anti-sexist", I'm cool with it.
hacker789 13y ago
(I'm assuming you're using "anti-sexist" to mean "feminist" rather than its literal definition.) A little over a year ago, there was a lot of third-wave feminist activism here after several "Atheism Plus" communities mentioned Hacker News. Gradually, people started standing up to them, and their activism is not nearly as prominent. On a side note: If you're curious about "Atheism Plus", it's a set of communities that focus on its members vision of social justice. Interestingly, it's not really about atheism; it's almost never discussed. For example, here's a current snapshot of the front page of their subreddit: http://archive.is/CMcAy http://archive.is/CMcAy
- makomk 13y ago
  Yeah, I'm actually surprised feminists aren't more unpopular at times, because they do this with essentially anything resembling activism that isn't feminism: they go in and insist that members of that group focus on their form of feminism to the exclusion of whatever the group's actually about. (Often making use of the fact they have far more contacts and influence in the media to portray any dissent as women-hating and abominable.) Same's been happening with Russel Brand and opposition to the current political system here in the UK.
  - duairc 13y ago
    I don't think feminists have anywhere near as much social power as you seem to think they have. And the ones that do are white, liberal feminists. Most other feminists dislike them too (but not for the same reasons).
nailer 13y ago
I imagine because 'doing shots with your boss is a sexual thing and a dumb idea, and someone kissing you is an unwelcome advance but not assault' is a point that resonated with a lot of people. 'Kissing your subordinate at work' is also a dumb idea, of course. But, from reading the reports of the other people there, this was an illegitimate accusation of sexual assault, and what amounted to a dumb guy who escalated an existing sexual situation doesn't deserve to have his life ruined. The thread was shut down because it could cause a flamewar. That felt like a statement that the body shot girl's criminal accusations (yes, sexual assault is a crime) had merit but any discussion or counter argument did not. The idea that saying both men and women should not create sexual situations in the workplace is not 'sexist'. Not is questioning an unmerited accusation of criminal behaviour.
- duairc 13y ago
  Kissing someone who doesn't want to be kissed is sexual assault! I don't understand how you can be denying that? It definitely definitely is sexual assault. If you want to kiss somebody and you want to not sexually assault them, you have to ask them first. And you have to give them room to say no and consider the social power you have over them. Did this person do that? No, absolutely not. If you don't think this stuff is important then it's because you're obviously a man who has never had to deal with this kind of stuff. And even if for some reason, you feel so strongly that the definition of sexual assault should not include the incident you're talking about, and you don't have any problem with taking away the power of survivors to define their experiences as sexual assault, then okay, fine, you can have your own private definition of sexual assault. But do you really think that's the most important thing here? You obviously have no empathy for the survivor at all. The “dumb guy” doesn't deserve to have his life ruined? Maybe, maybe not, but you shouldn't worry about it, because only 3% of rapes ever punished anyway.[1] But it's not about the perpetrator, it's about the survivor. Does she deserve to have her life ruined? Of course she doesn't, because she's done nothing wrong (fuck you for victim blaming). But this could have ruined her life, and maybe it did (I don't know her, I don't know). And by the way, "escalat[ing] an existing sexual situation" are just your weasel words for "crossing boundaries without permission". You always have to ask permission, and it's not hard to do so, and it's nice as well. If you're not a rapist, then you don't want to cross people's boundaries, so you don't want to do something if the other person doesn't want to. You might want to read the definition of rape-mindedness.[2] Thanks for proving my point. [1]: http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-ra... [2]: http://radtransfem.tumblr.com/post/30163502692/tw-what-rape-is-not-and-a-suggested-new-crime http://radtransfem.tumblr.com/post/30163502692/tw-what-rape-...

I'm actually really surprised they seem to think that the HN community is anti-sexist. Compared to 4chan, maybe, but from my experience it isn't at all.

by duairc 13y ago

I'm actually really surprised they seem to think that the HN community is anti-sexist. Compared to 4chan, maybe, but from my experience it isn't at all.

minimaxir 13y ago

There have been a few incidents where discussions about gender issues have been very quickly flagged off the front page. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495950

Nav_Panel 13y ago
I don't understand why the post you linked would have been flagged. I see nothing at all wrong with it.
- minimaxir 13y ago
  That's the problem. It was at #3, then immediately dropped off. (see the comments)
- redthrowaway 13y ago
  It would have tripped the flamewar detector. If a submission engenders (get it?) a flame war in the comments, it gets buried automatically.

sliverstorm 13y ago

The HN community appears to have embittered members of both sides of that argument.

sbierwagen 13y ago

4chan considers reddit to be a hotbed of radical feminist activism, solely due to /r/SRS. Of course, they'd probably say the same of any community where you use something close to real names, like HN.

TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
/r/SRS is hardly a hotbed of radfem activism either. It's a circlejerk where people post posts from other parts of reddit and laugh depressingly at how awful they are

saraid216 13y ago

As someone who's played a few rounds in HN discussions on sexism, I'll put it this way: on HN, there are a decent number of legitimate feminists. There are enough to put up a fight when a fight needs to be had. When a discussion thread starts getting bad, there are enough of us that you can usually expect to see someone step in and not feel completely alone in engaging. Even better, a decent number of those who are willing to speak out are also capable of doing it reasonably and coherently with an eye towards explaining the issues understandably. That doesn't mean the people they're talking with are convinced; people are almost never convinced like that. And best of all, we aren't downvoted into oblivion when we take such stands. I've gotten some significant chunks of karma for being the feminist in a thread. If all of this labels us "anti-sexist", I'm cool with it.

hacker789 13y ago

(I'm assuming you're using "anti-sexist" to mean "feminist" rather than its literal definition.) A little over a year ago, there was a lot of third-wave feminist activism here after several "Atheism Plus" communities mentioned Hacker News. Gradually, people started standing up to them, and their activism is not nearly as prominent. On a side note: If you're curious about "Atheism Plus", it's a set of communities that focus on its members vision of social justice. Interestingly, it's not really about atheism; it's almost never discussed. For example, here's a current snapshot of the front page of their subreddit: http://archive.is/CMcAy http://archive.is/CMcAy

makomk 13y ago
Yeah, I'm actually surprised feminists aren't more unpopular at times, because they do this with essentially anything resembling activism that isn't feminism: they go in and insist that members of that group focus on their form of feminism to the exclusion of whatever the group's actually about. (Often making use of the fact they have far more contacts and influence in the media to portray any dissent as women-hating and abominable.) Same's been happening with Russel Brand and opposition to the current political system here in the UK.
- duairc 13y ago
  I don't think feminists have anywhere near as much social power as you seem to think they have. And the ones that do are white, liberal feminists. Most other feminists dislike them too (but not for the same reasons).

nailer 13y ago

I imagine because 'doing shots with your boss is a sexual thing and a dumb idea, and someone kissing you is an unwelcome advance but not assault' is a point that resonated with a lot of people. 'Kissing your subordinate at work' is also a dumb idea, of course. But, from reading the reports of the other people there, this was an illegitimate accusation of sexual assault, and what amounted to a dumb guy who escalated an existing sexual situation doesn't deserve to have his life ruined. The thread was shut down because it could cause a flamewar. That felt like a statement that the body shot girl's criminal accusations (yes, sexual assault is a crime) had merit but any discussion or counter argument did not. The idea that saying both men and women should not create sexual situations in the workplace is not 'sexist'. Not is questioning an unmerited accusation of criminal behaviour.

duairc 13y ago
Kissing someone who doesn't want to be kissed is sexual assault! I don't understand how you can be denying that? It definitely definitely is sexual assault. If you want to kiss somebody and you want to not sexually assault them, you have to ask them first. And you have to give them room to say no and consider the social power you have over them. Did this person do that? No, absolutely not. If you don't think this stuff is important then it's because you're obviously a man who has never had to deal with this kind of stuff. And even if for some reason, you feel so strongly that the definition of sexual assault should not include the incident you're talking about, and you don't have any problem with taking away the power of survivors to define their experiences as sexual assault, then okay, fine, you can have your own private definition of sexual assault. But do you really think that's the most important thing here? You obviously have no empathy for the survivor at all. The “dumb guy” doesn't deserve to have his life ruined? Maybe, maybe not, but you shouldn't worry about it, because only 3% of rapes ever punished anyway.[1] But it's not about the perpetrator, it's about the survivor. Does she deserve to have her life ruined? Of course she doesn't, because she's done nothing wrong (fuck you for victim blaming). But this could have ruined her life, and maybe it did (I don't know her, I don't know). And by the way, "escalat[ing] an existing sexual situation" are just your weasel words for "crossing boundaries without permission". You always have to ask permission, and it's not hard to do so, and it's nice as well. If you're not a rapist, then you don't want to cross people's boundaries, so you don't want to do something if the other person doesn't want to. You might want to read the definition of rape-mindedness.[2] Thanks for proving my point. [1]: http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-ra... [2]: http://radtransfem.tumblr.com/post/30163502692/tw-what-rape-is-not-and-a-suggested-new-crime http://radtransfem.tumblr.com/post/30163502692/tw-what-rape-...