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I think you are being distracted by the content of the comment. This kind of nonsense has nothing to do with sexism. (Or if it were racist it has nothing to do

I think you are being distracted by the content of the comment. This kind of nonsense has nothing to do with sexism. (Or if it were racist it has nothing to do with racism, or any other types of 'isms.) Some people are simply cruel, angry, sadistic bullies and the internet gives them the anonymity to get away with it. The reason for the comment was only to hurt.

arrrg 12y ago
That doesn’t really make sense, does it? Why do you believe that someone who says something sexist (or racist) is not actually sexist (or racist)? I see no reason at all for this assumption. It seems non-sensical to me. Those people want to be cruel, sure, but they are also sexist (or racist). Also, being sexist (or racist) is as much defined by actions and words as it is by intent. Actually, intent is pretty irrelevant (at least for the victim). What matters there are the actual actions and words.
- imgabe 12y ago
  They're not cruel because they're sexist, they're sexist because they're cruel.
  - arrrg 12y ago
    How can you know that? That seems like wishful thinking to me.
    - enraged_camel 12y ago
      I think what he is trying to say is that their cruelty manifests as sexism. As in, they perceive the target's sex as the lowest-hanging fruit that they can attack, and they know it is likely to hurt the target, so they go for it. It's like making fun of someone because they are short. That doesn't make someone a "shortist." It just shows that they are cruel human beings. I see sexism as more of a fundamental belief. As in, the person went through some thought process that they think is logical, and they have reached a conclusion (that they think as logical) that women are inferior to men. This then comes out in their behavior even when the intention is not to cause harm. It's an attitude that exists independently of cruelty.
      - arrrg 12y ago
        Again, how do you know that? That seems to be wishful thinking. Also, the end result is the same, either way. The intent doesn’t really matter all that much, if only because the mindset of someone going to sexism or racism to be cruel is seriously fucked up. I’m certainly not racist or sexist when I want to be cruel to other people, even if I’m extremely angry and willing to say a lot to hurt the other person. Going there wouldn’t even cross my mind. (I tend to go for age, I think. That exposes my own ageism, something I still have to deal with. I don’t think that’s ok, either, and I also think being ageist is not ok.)
        imgabe 12y ago
        So, your working hypothesis based on that comment is that they're an otherwise friendly and fair-minded person, but when they see that a woman wrote a blog about programming they feel the need to go out of their way to write a comment telling them to stfu? Anything's possible, I guess. But, based on my particular lifetime of experience with people, jerks are usually jerks in multiple aspects of their life.
        arrrg 12y ago
        I mean, sure, of course. But they are still being sexist.
        afarrell 12y ago
        Hence, "they are sexist because they are cruel."
        arrrg 12y ago
        But that to me seems like a distinction without a difference.
        imgabe 12y ago
        You can be cruel without being sexist, and you can be sexist without being cruel. Every time sexism comes up, comments like this get trotted out. These people are bottom-feeders. They have no ability to affect anything in their own life, so they make hurtful comments on the internet to try and affect others, just so they can feel like they're in control of something. Stamping out sexism isn't going to stop them from doing that. They're not reading these articles or these comments. If they are, they're just happy that someone is paying attention to them. I think there are far bigger fish to fry when it comes to fighting sexism than going after some basement-dwelling mouth-breathers who don't actually matter. You could actually focus on normal, good-intentioned people who have just been brought up in a culture of sexism and would happily change if it were pointed out to them how they're hurting others. edit: I shouldn't say they "don't matter" as I've never been on the receiving end of it, and it probably matters a great deal when you are. I just meant that the ability of these people to affect someone's life beyond making hurtful comments on the Internet is minimal.
    - waterlesscloud 12y ago
      I'm not sure I can see a belief that some people are inherently cruel enough to use whatever attack is available to them as "wishful thinking".
- potatolicious 12y ago
  They're real-life trolls. They may not actually believe the things they say, but they say them because they know it will upset you. In some ways these people scare me more than actual sexists/racists/whateverists, because they're not ignorant, they just take joy in suffering, and actively manipulate people in such a way that maximizes chaos and pain. That mindset concerns me much more than someone who actually believes women/blacks/minority_group are inferior.
  - arrrg 12y ago
    I’m honestly not willing to make that distinction. I don’t care about intent, I care about what someone says.
    - potatolicious 12y ago
      I think the distinction of intent is important, though it certainly doesn't excuse the words. Someone who is saying something sexist out of ignorance can be reached out to, possibly brought over to the right side with reason and the right approach. Someone who is saying it even though they know they're wrong, just to get a rise out of people, is sociopathic, and engaging with them would be a waste of time. In other words, some people are bigots of circumstance - having been born, raised in a time and place, or otherwise exposed to certain views at certain moments. They can become allies, or at least brought to a position that isn't firmly bigoted. I think it's worthwhile to recognize the difference if only for the pragmatic purpose of knowing which arguments might be worthwhile and which are clear wastes of time.
  - prawn 12y ago
    I don't think the majority stop and think "How can I upset this person?" otherwise we'd see males cop it from males a lot more. I think it happens on a more instinctive level. e.g., "That person is a different gender or race to me so I must attack" and something emotional is a quick and easy thoughtless option.
  - fallinghawks 12y ago
    Agreed, but I suspect trolls do to some extent agree/believe. If they actively were against it, they wouldn't say it (or at least I certainly hope so). What concerns me is the casualness with which trolls threaten rape/death/other violence behind the anonymity of the internet; the more frequently this behavior is seen, the more normalized it becomes.
- npizzolato 12y ago
  That's ridiculous. Of course intent matters. I would hope you take someone's intent into account anytime you perceive some slight. Otherwise you're just making the problem worse, elevating everything to a 10. The end result of not caring about intent are ridiculous "zero tolerance" policies.
tptacek 12y ago
What purpose is served by trying to argue that an overtly sexist comment ("you're a woman, leave development to the men") has nothing to do with sexism? This is another instance of the "to a certain kind of nerd, every problem can be unproductively reduced to a spreadsheet" fallacy that Joel Spolsky talked about on his blog. Follow the logic to its conclusion and what you're ending up with is "there's no such thing as sexism (or racism, or ageism); there is only exploitation and abuse, and sexism happens to be one of its vectors". About the best thing you can say about an argument like that is that it's a flight to abstraction, demanding that we litigate epistemology instead of dealing with the circumstances that are staring us in the face. The signal these tangential arguments tend to send is "the author of this comment is profoundly uncomfortable confronting sexism". It is OK to be uncomfortable with sexism; you don't have to engage.
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  You're having a different conversation from Mindcrime and Protonfish. Mindcrime expressed confusion that anyone could actually believe such a thing. Protonfish expressed his belief that such comments are primarily intended to hurt, by which he's implicitly agreeing with Mindcrime. He doesn't think the attackers actually believe such a thing. He's not trying to minimize the attack. He's just attempting to help Mindcrime understand how someone would say something that they both believe to not be true. What he's not doing is addressing the origin of the desire to hurt, which likely is based (at least so I believe) in misogyny. No one has at any point said there is no such thing as sexism or misogyny.
afarrell 12y ago
"has nothing to do with sexism" is too strong. imgabe has it right: "they aren't cruel because they are sexist, they are sexist because they are cruel." Consider 1960's era Chicago real estate agent who makes money by the following process: 1) Scare white people out of the neighborhood by having a black woman push a baby in a stroller outside their house. 2) Buy their house for cheap 3) Rent-to-own the house to black people and just as they are about to own it, bring up some bullshit thing and evict them. He is more likely motivated by greed than a desire to fuck over black people for the sake of racism. But he's still acting racist and contributing to the system of systemic racism. A troll how picks sexist remarks to fuck with people isn't really motivated by a sincere desire to advance sexism...but they are still contributing to sexism as a systemic problem.

arrrg 12y ago

That doesn’t really make sense, does it? Why do you believe that someone who says something sexist (or racist) is not actually sexist (or racist)? I see no reason at all for this assumption. It seems non-sensical to me. Those people want to be cruel, sure, but they are also sexist (or racist). Also, being sexist (or racist) is as much defined by actions and words as it is by intent. Actually, intent is pretty irrelevant (at least for the victim). What matters there are the actual actions and words.

imgabe 12y ago
They're not cruel because they're sexist, they're sexist because they're cruel.
- arrrg 12y ago
  How can you know that? That seems like wishful thinking to me.
  - enraged_camel 12y ago
    I think what he is trying to say is that their cruelty manifests as sexism. As in, they perceive the target's sex as the lowest-hanging fruit that they can attack, and they know it is likely to hurt the target, so they go for it. It's like making fun of someone because they are short. That doesn't make someone a "shortist." It just shows that they are cruel human beings. I see sexism as more of a fundamental belief. As in, the person went through some thought process that they think is logical, and they have reached a conclusion (that they think as logical) that women are inferior to men. This then comes out in their behavior even when the intention is not to cause harm. It's an attitude that exists independently of cruelty.
    - arrrg 12y ago
      Again, how do you know that? That seems to be wishful thinking. Also, the end result is the same, either way. The intent doesn’t really matter all that much, if only because the mindset of someone going to sexism or racism to be cruel is seriously fucked up. I’m certainly not racist or sexist when I want to be cruel to other people, even if I’m extremely angry and willing to say a lot to hurt the other person. Going there wouldn’t even cross my mind. (I tend to go for age, I think. That exposes my own ageism, something I still have to deal with. I don’t think that’s ok, either, and I also think being ageist is not ok.)
      - imgabe 12y ago
        So, your working hypothesis based on that comment is that they're an otherwise friendly and fair-minded person, but when they see that a woman wrote a blog about programming they feel the need to go out of their way to write a comment telling them to stfu? Anything's possible, I guess. But, based on my particular lifetime of experience with people, jerks are usually jerks in multiple aspects of their life.
        arrrg 12y ago
        I mean, sure, of course. But they are still being sexist.
        afarrell 12y ago
        Hence, "they are sexist because they are cruel."
        arrrg 12y ago
        But that to me seems like a distinction without a difference.
        imgabe 12y ago
        You can be cruel without being sexist, and you can be sexist without being cruel. Every time sexism comes up, comments like this get trotted out. These people are bottom-feeders. They have no ability to affect anything in their own life, so they make hurtful comments on the internet to try and affect others, just so they can feel like they're in control of something. Stamping out sexism isn't going to stop them from doing that. They're not reading these articles or these comments. If they are, they're just happy that someone is paying attention to them. I think there are far bigger fish to fry when it comes to fighting sexism than going after some basement-dwelling mouth-breathers who don't actually matter. You could actually focus on normal, good-intentioned people who have just been brought up in a culture of sexism and would happily change if it were pointed out to them how they're hurting others. edit: I shouldn't say they "don't matter" as I've never been on the receiving end of it, and it probably matters a great deal when you are. I just meant that the ability of these people to affect someone's life beyond making hurtful comments on the Internet is minimal.
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    I'm not sure I can see a belief that some people are inherently cruel enough to use whatever attack is available to them as "wishful thinking".
potatolicious 12y ago
They're real-life trolls. They may not actually believe the things they say, but they say them because they know it will upset you. In some ways these people scare me more than actual sexists/racists/whateverists, because they're not ignorant, they just take joy in suffering, and actively manipulate people in such a way that maximizes chaos and pain. That mindset concerns me much more than someone who actually believes women/blacks/minority_group are inferior.
- arrrg 12y ago
  I’m honestly not willing to make that distinction. I don’t care about intent, I care about what someone says.
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    I think the distinction of intent is important, though it certainly doesn't excuse the words. Someone who is saying something sexist out of ignorance can be reached out to, possibly brought over to the right side with reason and the right approach. Someone who is saying it even though they know they're wrong, just to get a rise out of people, is sociopathic, and engaging with them would be a waste of time. In other words, some people are bigots of circumstance - having been born, raised in a time and place, or otherwise exposed to certain views at certain moments. They can become allies, or at least brought to a position that isn't firmly bigoted. I think it's worthwhile to recognize the difference if only for the pragmatic purpose of knowing which arguments might be worthwhile and which are clear wastes of time.
- prawn 12y ago
  I don't think the majority stop and think "How can I upset this person?" otherwise we'd see males cop it from males a lot more. I think it happens on a more instinctive level. e.g., "That person is a different gender or race to me so I must attack" and something emotional is a quick and easy thoughtless option.
- fallinghawks 12y ago
  Agreed, but I suspect trolls do to some extent agree/believe. If they actively were against it, they wouldn't say it (or at least I certainly hope so). What concerns me is the casualness with which trolls threaten rape/death/other violence behind the anonymity of the internet; the more frequently this behavior is seen, the more normalized it becomes.
npizzolato 12y ago
That's ridiculous. Of course intent matters. I would hope you take someone's intent into account anytime you perceive some slight. Otherwise you're just making the problem worse, elevating everything to a 10. The end result of not caring about intent are ridiculous "zero tolerance" policies.

tptacek 12y ago

What purpose is served by trying to argue that an overtly sexist comment ("you're a woman, leave development to the men") has nothing to do with sexism? This is another instance of the "to a certain kind of nerd, every problem can be unproductively reduced to a spreadsheet" fallacy that Joel Spolsky talked about on his blog. Follow the logic to its conclusion and what you're ending up with is "there's no such thing as sexism (or racism, or ageism); there is only exploitation and abuse, and sexism happens to be one of its vectors". About the best thing you can say about an argument like that is that it's a flight to abstraction, demanding that we litigate epistemology instead of dealing with the circumstances that are staring us in the face. The signal these tangential arguments tend to send is "the author of this comment is profoundly uncomfortable confronting sexism". It is OK to be uncomfortable with sexism; you don't have to engage.

waterlesscloud 12y ago
You're having a different conversation from Mindcrime and Protonfish. Mindcrime expressed confusion that anyone could actually believe such a thing. Protonfish expressed his belief that such comments are primarily intended to hurt, by which he's implicitly agreeing with Mindcrime. He doesn't think the attackers actually believe such a thing. He's not trying to minimize the attack. He's just attempting to help Mindcrime understand how someone would say something that they both believe to not be true. What he's not doing is addressing the origin of the desire to hurt, which likely is based (at least so I believe) in misogyny. No one has at any point said there is no such thing as sexism or misogyny.

afarrell 12y ago

"has nothing to do with sexism" is too strong. imgabe has it right: "they aren't cruel because they are sexist, they are sexist because they are cruel." Consider 1960's era Chicago real estate agent who makes money by the following process: 1) Scare white people out of the neighborhood by having a black woman push a baby in a stroller outside their house. 2) Buy their house for cheap 3) Rent-to-own the house to black people and just as they are about to own it, bring up some bullshit thing and evict them. He is more likely motivated by greed than a desire to fuck over black people for the sake of racism. But he's still acting racist and contributing to the system of systemic racism. A troll how picks sexist remarks to fuck with people isn't really motivated by a sincere desire to advance sexism...but they are still contributing to sexism as a systemic problem.