It's sad that an organization like the NYT would engage in unbecoming behavior to protect one of their own's bad behavior (going against an agreement not to basically doxx someone) and going so far as character assassination because what Naomi Wu claimed went against the NYT's narrative.
This is the New York Times. This is not unusual. Journalists shit on people who can’t hurt them all the time. The New York Times is different only insofar as it can shit on more people from a greater height. Journalistic ethics is a lie.
In April of 2018, when Vice Magazine’s lawyers pressured Patreon to drop my account, I had no other options that would enable me to keep my YouTube channel going.
ZOMG that's so evil! She complained that you didn't respect her desire to remain anonymous, so you destroy her livelihood? Why would any source trust Vice to safeguard her anonymity or indeed to do anything they promised after this saga of shitty behavior? Answer: they rely on sources not knowing anything about them, because after all the sources don't have the iron control of the social media "conversation" that Western journalists have.
Patreon's deplatforming policies are capricious and draconian because they have to keep financial partners happy, and the policies of those partners are capricious and draconian. Those with enough social media and commercial power can deal (in fact if TFA is believed it appears they can actually steer the machine of injustice). The author of TFA cannot deal, which is the entire point of TFA. We always knew in our hearts that "twitter as help desk" was unjust at some level. This is a concrete example of that.
[EDIT:] Now that I've read to the end of TFA, she buried the lede! This woman has been subject to so much shitty behavior! She was the third customer of a Patreon competitor, "SubscribeStar", and one of their largest customers, so the bastards just shut down the entire site. Now it appears that it's back up: https://www.subscribestar.com/posts/7863
I have a solution to your Patreon issues, see my other comment below. I would be very interested in talking to you if collecting Ethereum is an alternative you are considering.
There really should be a way to "roll your own Patreon" for individuals. Whatever your individual viewpoints on each of the de-platforming incidents in the recent past, having them all be lumped into one service makes it easier to take down and disrupt the users of said service. I don't think Bitcoin is necessary yet given the amount of additional complexity for the average creator and average patron, just a separate web page that allows for recurring subscriptions.
"Build your own X" has its limits. The payment processors are the ones that will be and are the censors. Enough social-media shrieking and Mastercard and Visa willingly bend to the loudest voices. We don't yet live in a world of ubiquitous/easy crypto, and mailing cash or money orders around is not feasible at scale. Only government regulation will heal the imbalance.
SexyCyborg (and others): I would love for you to check out https://finneyfor.com. It is Ethereum based (not Bitcoin), but specifically designed to remove the problems that so many Patreon users have dealt with AND something that an average blog reader can use without understanding cryptocurrency at all (beyond getting some on an exchange like Coinbase).
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FinneyFor works with Jekyll and WordPress. Would appreciate any feedback, positive or negative.
If the damage is done, I’m having a hard time understanding what did the damage. If I’m parsing the vague outline of what hasn’t been said directly, the sensitive details being danced around come across as strangely uncontroversial to a Western outsider, which seems to be a key part of the argument.
At first I thought maybe the mentions of gender and implants, and the doubt that a twenty something girl could accomplish such things, might be a nod to status as a transexual?
It seems that she’s fraternizing with a white boyfriend, and has implants that she flaunts scandalously, which is frowned upon by authoritarian government officials in China? That she’s accessing foreign platforms unlawfully is the only pretense these officials need to cause her problems, granted the dim view of her attention seeking to begin with?
You're speculating too much here. Calm down a little. Your last two paragraphs are basically unsubstantiated. And if she's "attention seeking" What are the other millions of Youtubers doing, scratching and sniffing? Also, did you have to create another Greenhorn account just to write that nonsense?
It definitely changes a significant chunk of the “Women in Tech” narrative, when she poses as woman, but was not born a woman.
The key feature being the sense of abandon that this person operates apparent sexuality with. It’s deceptive to portray an image of, say, shining LED lighting through breast implants casually, like they’re nothing, if the individual wasn’t born with breasts and so, doesn’t feel an instinctive urge to take them seriously. This person obviously toys with the novelty of a sexualized appearance, because it wasn’t an authentic portrayal from the start.
Now the true colors of the media apparatus become clear. Large recognizable outfits (NYT and Vice), opperating in coordinated unison, as fellow collaborators to destroy an oddity that threatens to tarnish what can longer possibly be anything but a carefully orchestrated propaganda program.
An example of a highly sexualized MTF transexual that readily outperforms women is patently incompatible with concepts like women in tech and #metoo, and therefore must be destroyed.
That Vice might play the role of a villain with teeth is less of a surprise, but that The New York Times acted in concert is doubly interesting, since we now can view evidence of the methods thet employ to keep their hands clean and their fingerprints away from the dirty work.
And where have you seen that she was not born female? Where did that come from? Please, please, please give PROOF for your statement, because if you fail to do so, your entire comment falls apart.
Why? You’re in this fight so hard, it requires no effort to convince you of anything you don’t already believe.
You should learn to write with a voice that’s more urgent and stressed.
Anyway, Naomi Wu has such a feminine face. To look at it, your mind doesn’t even flicker a question of sexual identity. You look, your mind adjudicates “female” and moves on. There’s simply no question.
I don't really know what to make of this comment, but without a doubt it breaks this guideline:
> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
IMO, this person likes to stir up attention with baseless accusations when her profit-seeking machinations don't work out. I remember there was some makezine drama related to her a couple years back too. Iirc she was whining about not being featured in makezine, and her 'project' was a very simple 'I sewed LEDs into a cooter-shower miniskirt', not really comparable to what usually gets featured in makezine. But of course, makezine ignoring her demand to give her free publicity and consequent potential increase in youtube/patreon earnings constituted sexism.
I'll wait for more details before rushing to conclusions on this one.
What is your point? I have a semi-popular machining youtube channel, but I am not looking for notoriety, victimhood or money.
My comment was based on the only thing I remembered this person from. Between youtube and patreon, she was pulling 4-5k dollars in monthly couple years ago. But it was not enough and she got greedy. Looks like combination of her greed and manipulativeness fired back now, because she tried to use sjw bullying methods on those who are much more experienced 8n using the same.
Again, this is just my opinion. I can have an opinion on comparative value of two things without being able to produce them.
If you have an opinion on two comparable things, YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY ENTITLED TO KEEP SAID OPINION TO YOURSELF AND NOT PARADE IT IN PUBLIC FORUMS. Else if you choose to make allegations using words like "his person likes to stir up attention with baseless accusations when her profit-seeking machinations" "she was whining" "cooter-shower miniskirt" "combination of her greed and manipulativeness" "sjw" then I am at liberty to think nothing more of you beside a hate-filled entitled scoundrel of the same type as the orange ersatz of a coprolith that currently occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and would deem any opinion that you may have or may have had as utterly worthless and repulsive as the semi-solid waste output that emerges from the rear end of the bovine species.
You remember her from one thing (which you're possibly misremembering, given that there's been more between her and Make than "she's mad she didn't get featured") and that gives you enough knowledge to have a useful opinion on what happened in the mean time, and what her motivations are?
Found the story as written by SexyCyborg in the post very hard to follow, plus it felt a little too self serving to take 100% at face value.
I'll admit though, I saw her once on Hacker News the first time she went viral, later read that Reddit "expose" and then promptly never thought of her again. It took a while to walk back what I thought was happening so I could understand what was going on.
This video [1] helped me get the actual context of the article.
The West honestly doesn't come off well in this, but neither does China really. More of the same "are the people with power over others using it with decency and respect?"
I have an expression I like to use, “It’s all about merit until merit has tits.”
I'm very sorry for her negative experiences. From what I have read, she's genuinely been mistreated and I wish we lived in a better world.
I'm well aware that sexism is alive and well. I'm reasonably vocal about my own frustrations and I'm frequently treated dismissively myself in a manner that looks suspiciously like sexism. I'm also guilty of not reading the entire article here, much less following the long backstory in any real depth over time.
But she had breast implant surgery and her enormous artificial breasts are a significant part of her identity. She strongly emphasizes that element of her appearance in how she dresses and how she frames photos of herself that she posts to the internet, then justifies her style of dress as "It's not a problem in my city and I would dress appropriately if I visited your city" while not acknowledging that the photos on the internet are in a different context. That when she posts online, in some sense, she's no longer in her city anymore. She doesn't have to dress differently in her city to downplay this intentionally emphasized aspect of herself while on the internet.
She basically insists that she has a right to express herself as she sees fit when it comes to body modifications and clothing, then vocally complains when the hypersexualized image she intentionally crafts and promotes gets her treated like a sex object.
I have spent more than nine years participating on HN. It was unexpected drama at first, but has gradually gotten better. I have put a lot of time and effort into trying to figure out where I could do things differently in order to try to put down the enormous burden of cultural baggage from a very long history of gender stuff on the planet.
The approach she has taken generally strikes me as "putting out the fire with gasoline."
I have hesitated to say anything about it because it's likely to be interpreted as victim blaming and that's really not my intent at all. I think women need to know what works and what doesn't.
I am in no way suggesting she was wrong to get breast implants, nor am I suggesting she should dress differently. I'm only saying she is entirely free to do both of those things without putting her tits front and center in soft porn style photos on what seems like all her social media platforms while bitching no one takes her seriously as a tech expert. I am unaware of any male tech experts who, say, put their genitals on display for all the world to see and then complain that it is all anyone talks about or something along those lines.
I sincerely wish I could help her. I have never bothered to reach out to her because I have zero reason to believe she would take anything I think as sincerely helpful. I have lots of reasons to think it would go over so poorly that it's a game where the only winning move is not to play.
I am absolutely not saying this to cause her trouble nor to dismiss any of the genuinely bad behavior she's been subjected to by various parties.
That isn't my premise and my comment is not about rights.
I'm a pragmatist looking for a path forward that actually works. I don't find it helpful to get hung up on theoretical ideals. I'm much more interested in figuring out best practices.
Constantly calling tremendous attention to a thing while complaining that it gets too much attention is not a best practice.
I'm aware that the world at large will focus overly much on the detail of her gender no matter how she chooses to handle it and this gets crazy-making and makes it difficult to find a path forward. The fact that it's difficult to figure out all on one's own is why I left the comment. It only compounds the problems women have to avoid talking about a pragmatic approach and what piece women can take a little control over due to the general attitude that talking about what part women can control is routinely decried as victim blaming.
I'm not blaming the victim. I'm only saying that if you don't want to be a victim, there are things within a woman's power that can help improve outcomes.
It is unfortunate that it is so hard to make such a point. The degree to which I get attacked for trying to talk about what actually works in the world rather often strikes me as an insideous means to deny women better answers and keep them trapped in the role of victim while pretending to ascribe to higher ideals than me.
It’s pretty clear she wants to follow her current path despite the obstacles. She’s been hearing the same criticisms for years now. The only change is it’s escalated from random internet people to the NYT.
I don’t really see her as a victim and I don’t think she sees herself that way either. Certainly she feels she was dealt with unjustly - and is fighting back.
Suggesting it would just be easier if she stopped is accurate but that’s not how change is accomplished.
By the way I carefully avoided charged terms like “victim blaming” because I don’t feel the larger debates in the west matter here. She lives in China with its own different set of challenges.
Hacker News gets 5 million visitors a month. I'm posting on Hacker News and addressing the audience here. I did not try to find contact information for her so I could try to "school" her on how she "should" behave. I don't happen to assume she's ever going to see this remark, much less care about what I think.
If she wants to be a force for change, hopefully she's cool with sparking meaty discussion among other people who are trying to sort their crap.
Unfortunately, you can't have meaty discussion in the abstract. It's quite hard to latch onto a good topic of discussion without sounding like you are talking about something in specific, in this case her.
My attempts to try to talk here really shouldn't be construed as intent on my part to tell her how to live her life.
It's impossible to work out best practices for talking about a thing without being allowed to talk about it at all. Replies like yours are basically the norm -- we can't talk generally about what works because someone might take it as an attempt to police their choices.
I've generally erred on the side of not commenting on her choices because I believe it's her life. But that de facto leaves me no path forward for talking about any of the issues involved.
Yes, she lives in China. But none of the articles I've seen are really about her life in China per se. They are mostly about her life online interacting with the western world. That's even what the title of the piece is about.
If she were merely limiting her life to China and not intentionally circumventing their rules to reach a western audience, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
It's one of the criticisms of her I gave above: you can't post on the internet looking for money and interaction from a western audience and then tell the west "You can't criticize how I choose to express myself!" And now she's been largely cut off from her western audience and their money and is complaining about that fact.
If she just wants to be a Chinese individual with a Chinese life and no western audience and no money from Westerners via Patreon/the internet, she is free to go do that.
The west only has any interest in what she does because she chooses to go to great lengths to reach out to the west.
You can't have it both ways. You and she need to pick one.
> It's one of the criticisms of her I gave above: you can't post on the internet looking for money and interaction from a western audience and then tell the west "You can't criticize how I choose to express myself!" And now she's been largely cut off from her western audience and their money and is complaining about that fact.
The problem is not the criticism, its the culture war and tactic of de-platforming anything uncomfortable. If she just got rude messages or even unfair articles in the NYT and it was left there, then she could just ignore them and continue doing what she likes doing - and what her audience likes watching.
It should also be noted that her latest deplatforming wasn't even related to her. Paypal cut off her alternative to gofundme because of other people they were funding. She was just collateral damage.
Nobody here is complaining about mere criticism. They are complaining about the very real attacks and successful attempts at censure and silencing.
I'm a pretty controversial figure and have been thrown off of a number of forums or simply left because it clearly wasn't going to be productive and was an excess of drama. I've also worked hard for a lot of years at figuring out how to sort my crap and try to find my voice in ways that made me acceptable in some spaces.
I was homeless for several years and my gender has absolutely been a barrier to me using hn as effectively as I wish I could for professional networking and developing my own online income.
No one has the right to do anything they want. No, she really can't take the position that she can do whatever the hell she wants and you can't stop her. You can do more of whatever the hell you want in private. When you want to do it in public, especially with an audience and for profit, you can either find ways to be acceptable to those gatekeepers or get censured and silenced and cut off from the money you think is your right when it's really not.
I've dealt with a lot of similar issues to Naomi Wu. I'm older than her and I've taken a different approach to trying to address such issues.
What I'm doing appears to be generally less drama and trouble than most women deal with and seems to be moving things in the right direction. So I think I know a few things about the problem space and my preference is to try to explore what actually works rather than spend all my time on my high horse acting like other people are just bad people and should stop being bad people for my convenience or whatever.
I think Naomi Wu would be vastly less controversial if she put a stop to promoting herself with soft porn style photos of her enormous and artificially enhanced breasts front and center on all her work where you can't escape it even if you try. I think she could continue to dress exactly the same and keep her artificially enhanced giant breasts and have photos of herself in her quirky and often scanty outfits and pretty much all the rest of it and see the drama drop substantially by making that one change.
Suggesting she be willing to make a single change in positioning for PR purposes isn't some kind of censure. It is really a fairly small detail.
I'm sorry you and she seem to not want to hear that. But, again, I suggest you pick one: either women can do whatever the fuck they want on the internet at all times without justification -- including me -- or people who expect to earn a living online and have a public life via the Internet need to find ways to be diplomatic and craft their image and their message in a socially palatable fashion as simply a practical matter -- including both me and Naomi Wu.
I have worked hard at finding a way forward on the latter. I'm increasingly unsympathetic to people who want to both silence me for disagreeing with them and simultaneously argue that women should be allowed to exercise their God given right to do any fucking thing they want. I'm a woman doing what I fucking want here. If you sincerely think that's how it's supposed to go, then a "You go girl!" is all I should hear from you.
Since that's not what I'm hearing, I suggest you reconsider your claims about what you imagine you believe.
Oh, my sincere and deep apologies. Clearly, your high rank on the leaderboard of a forum directly implies that you don’t support the status quo. What an obvious conclusion I have overlooked!
Pragmatists are incapable of criticizing social norms? Where did you get that from? And I'm not saying this as some sort of "supporter" of DoreenMichele or anything like that - far from it. She's of course entitled to her opinions, but I'm under no obligation to agree with them.
More like: resisting social change in the name of “pragmatism” is a very old pattern.
Imagine a dialogue like this before 1967: “Hey friend, I’m just being a pragmatist — interracial marriage is illegal. You could go to jail. Just break up and date someone else. Of course it’s not right, but what can you do? We have to understand that our actions have impact in the society we live within. Don’t take this to court, it’ll ruin your life.”
Without people disagreeing with this, without people disagreeing with status quo-aligned pragmatism, Loving vs Virginia would have never happened. Not would have the end of slavery, women’s suffrage, gay marriage, etc.
But if this is typical of how you introduce yourself, then I can't say I'm exactly surprised that you get so much flak. It also makes me vastly less sympathetic to your many complaints about how other people behave.
You "introduced yourself" with an irrelevant attack on my appearance that was anything but sympathetic. It was the usual poorly considered lateral aggression from someone clearly educated enough to know better.
I wish you had taken the time to read what I wrote in the article- it does address many of the appearance issues you are fixated on and find so distressing.
I also wish you had taken the time to contact me- I have a standing invitation pinned to the top of my Twitter profile to any woman with questions about my appearance to have a friendly private chat about it before coming to conclusions.
I was brought up properly. I am respectful to more experienced, more educated women in the community who have the specific background to evaluate the impact of my appearance and presentation. If Limor Fried, Becky Stern- any of a dozen women in academia that I am in contact with told me I was hurting other women with my shenanigans and to go put some pants on. You'd see nothing but a blur as I did just that. That would be the end of it. Period. The consensus has been it hurts no one but me, and it has been argued it helps others in ways it does not help me.
I am a precedent- if my appearance does not matter, then no one's does. Not butch, not femme, the large, the small, the disabled, trans- none of it is relevant. The work and personal conduct are what matters. As soon as it becomes about "I know it when I see it" people have just as much right to complain about "sexualized" clothes like even a modest skirt, high-heels, makeup. The incel community shares your concerns and would love the foot you've put in the door for them.
Yes, I am aware that things have reached the point where my appearance does hurt me far more than it helps. It's a terrible "promotional" tool- all of the more successful female creators on YouTube dress far more modestly. It has closed countless doors and I do accept that. I looked this way long before I was on Western social media. It is gender expression first and foremost and important to me for reasons you would not be able to understand. I have made clear in the article you were uninterested in reading that I will not explain it- because no one should have to.
My appearance being raised in a post about being unjustly targeted and endangered by media outlets is odd. How is it relevant? My work stands on its own- I have never pushed for inclusion in anything on any basis but my work. I don't think we want to say that those with an objectionable appearance during some part of their life, should be excluded from professional events during which it's neither relevant nor apparent. If someone is a furry on the weekends- that's their business. If someone wears hot pants on the weekends- that's their business. So long as they don't hurt anyone, follow the prevailing dress code of the event- that's where it ends. It's about the work- not your personal comfort with my gender expression.
You- personally are uncomfortable with my appearance. That's simply as far as it goes. It's not justification for anything. Not with me, not with anyone else. I'm ok with that- you personally don't have to be comfortable with my appearance. But wrapped in however many awkward disclaimers you like, you don't get to suggest that the unreasonable conduct of others is something I should silently endure because of it.
If you were to best describe what the role I serve in the community, what my "profession" is- it's literally "STEM ringer". We have a problem in STEM where pervasive stereotypes try to tie women's intelligence and competence to their gender expression. My job to fuck with that. My job is to look dim, act sharp & kick ass. My personal style IS professional.
I did not introduce myself to you. I posted on a public forum where I am a regular participant. As I already stated elsewhere, I did not seek you out because I'm sure you don't care what I think. Your remarks here strongly suggest my conclusion was spot on.
I'm not in the least bothered by your appearance. You are free to do as you please in that regard. I've already stated that elsewhere as well.
I don't actually care about your assertion that you know more important women than me whose opinions matter so much more than mine.
Your hostility is unlikely to further your cause. Coming at me like this is only serving to alienate me.
Your remarks here are simply convincing me that your ideology and mine are fundamentally incompatible.
> [...] women need to know what works and what doesn't.
I think men and women need to not treat people as sex objects regardless of how they dress. Saying that "women need to know 'what works'" is precisely victim-blaming, because it puts the onus on women, not men, to be responsible for men's behavior.
(Any genders above can be replaced with any other gender classification; it's irrelevant to the point.)
Knowledge is good. You may not have meant the onus on women--but to me it really sounded like it. By saying "women need to know what works" (again, to me) it sounds like "women need to understand that there is a certain way the world is, and if you want to fit in to that world, you must play by the world's rules".
My point of view is that if men are being assholes because BOOBIES!!1! then men are being assholes, and it's men who need to know "what works." The world's rules are skewed at the moment: IMO telling women that they need to know "what works" attacks a symptom, not a problem.
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[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 133 ms ] threadZOMG that's so evil! She complained that you didn't respect her desire to remain anonymous, so you destroy her livelihood? Why would any source trust Vice to safeguard her anonymity or indeed to do anything they promised after this saga of shitty behavior? Answer: they rely on sources not knowing anything about them, because after all the sources don't have the iron control of the social media "conversation" that Western journalists have.
[EDIT: removed speculation]
[EDIT:] Now that I've read to the end of TFA, she buried the lede! This woman has been subject to so much shitty behavior! She was the third customer of a Patreon competitor, "SubscribeStar", and one of their largest customers, so the bastards just shut down the entire site. Now it appears that it's back up: https://www.subscribestar.com/posts/7863
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At first I thought maybe the mentions of gender and implants, and the doubt that a twenty something girl could accomplish such things, might be a nod to status as a transexual?
It seems that she’s fraternizing with a white boyfriend, and has implants that she flaunts scandalously, which is frowned upon by authoritarian government officials in China? That she’s accessing foreign platforms unlawfully is the only pretense these officials need to cause her problems, granted the dim view of her attention seeking to begin with?
The key feature being the sense of abandon that this person operates apparent sexuality with. It’s deceptive to portray an image of, say, shining LED lighting through breast implants casually, like they’re nothing, if the individual wasn’t born with breasts and so, doesn’t feel an instinctive urge to take them seriously. This person obviously toys with the novelty of a sexualized appearance, because it wasn’t an authentic portrayal from the start.
Now the true colors of the media apparatus become clear. Large recognizable outfits (NYT and Vice), opperating in coordinated unison, as fellow collaborators to destroy an oddity that threatens to tarnish what can longer possibly be anything but a carefully orchestrated propaganda program.
An example of a highly sexualized MTF transexual that readily outperforms women is patently incompatible with concepts like women in tech and #metoo, and therefore must be destroyed.
That Vice might play the role of a villain with teeth is less of a surprise, but that The New York Times acted in concert is doubly interesting, since we now can view evidence of the methods thet employ to keep their hands clean and their fingerprints away from the dirty work.
You should learn to write with a voice that’s more urgent and stressed.
Anyway, Naomi Wu has such a feminine face. To look at it, your mind doesn’t even flicker a question of sexual identity. You look, your mind adjudicates “female” and moves on. There’s simply no question.
> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'll wait for more details before rushing to conclusions on this one.
My comment was based on the only thing I remembered this person from. Between youtube and patreon, she was pulling 4-5k dollars in monthly couple years ago. But it was not enough and she got greedy. Looks like combination of her greed and manipulativeness fired back now, because she tried to use sjw bullying methods on those who are much more experienced 8n using the same.
Again, this is just my opinion. I can have an opinion on comparative value of two things without being able to produce them.
I'll admit though, I saw her once on Hacker News the first time she went viral, later read that Reddit "expose" and then promptly never thought of her again. It took a while to walk back what I thought was happening so I could understand what was going on.
This video [1] helped me get the actual context of the article.
The West honestly doesn't come off well in this, but neither does China really. More of the same "are the people with power over others using it with decency and respect?"
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0dkwwV_iaw
I'm very sorry for her negative experiences. From what I have read, she's genuinely been mistreated and I wish we lived in a better world.
I'm well aware that sexism is alive and well. I'm reasonably vocal about my own frustrations and I'm frequently treated dismissively myself in a manner that looks suspiciously like sexism. I'm also guilty of not reading the entire article here, much less following the long backstory in any real depth over time.
But she had breast implant surgery and her enormous artificial breasts are a significant part of her identity. She strongly emphasizes that element of her appearance in how she dresses and how she frames photos of herself that she posts to the internet, then justifies her style of dress as "It's not a problem in my city and I would dress appropriately if I visited your city" while not acknowledging that the photos on the internet are in a different context. That when she posts online, in some sense, she's no longer in her city anymore. She doesn't have to dress differently in her city to downplay this intentionally emphasized aspect of herself while on the internet.
She basically insists that she has a right to express herself as she sees fit when it comes to body modifications and clothing, then vocally complains when the hypersexualized image she intentionally crafts and promotes gets her treated like a sex object.
I have spent more than nine years participating on HN. It was unexpected drama at first, but has gradually gotten better. I have put a lot of time and effort into trying to figure out where I could do things differently in order to try to put down the enormous burden of cultural baggage from a very long history of gender stuff on the planet.
The approach she has taken generally strikes me as "putting out the fire with gasoline."
I have hesitated to say anything about it because it's likely to be interpreted as victim blaming and that's really not my intent at all. I think women need to know what works and what doesn't.
I am in no way suggesting she was wrong to get breast implants, nor am I suggesting she should dress differently. I'm only saying she is entirely free to do both of those things without putting her tits front and center in soft porn style photos on what seems like all her social media platforms while bitching no one takes her seriously as a tech expert. I am unaware of any male tech experts who, say, put their genitals on display for all the world to see and then complain that it is all anyone talks about or something along those lines.
I sincerely wish I could help her. I have never bothered to reach out to her because I have zero reason to believe she would take anything I think as sincerely helpful. I have lots of reasons to think it would go over so poorly that it's a game where the only winning move is not to play.
I am absolutely not saying this to cause her trouble nor to dismiss any of the genuinely bad behavior she's been subjected to by various parties.
Why shouldn’t she have that right?
I'm a pragmatist looking for a path forward that actually works. I don't find it helpful to get hung up on theoretical ideals. I'm much more interested in figuring out best practices.
Constantly calling tremendous attention to a thing while complaining that it gets too much attention is not a best practice.
I'm aware that the world at large will focus overly much on the detail of her gender no matter how she chooses to handle it and this gets crazy-making and makes it difficult to find a path forward. The fact that it's difficult to figure out all on one's own is why I left the comment. It only compounds the problems women have to avoid talking about a pragmatic approach and what piece women can take a little control over due to the general attitude that talking about what part women can control is routinely decried as victim blaming.
I'm not blaming the victim. I'm only saying that if you don't want to be a victim, there are things within a woman's power that can help improve outcomes.
It is unfortunate that it is so hard to make such a point. The degree to which I get attacked for trying to talk about what actually works in the world rather often strikes me as an insideous means to deny women better answers and keep them trapped in the role of victim while pretending to ascribe to higher ideals than me.
I don’t really see her as a victim and I don’t think she sees herself that way either. Certainly she feels she was dealt with unjustly - and is fighting back.
Suggesting it would just be easier if she stopped is accurate but that’s not how change is accomplished.
By the way I carefully avoided charged terms like “victim blaming” because I don’t feel the larger debates in the west matter here. She lives in China with its own different set of challenges.
If she wants to be a force for change, hopefully she's cool with sparking meaty discussion among other people who are trying to sort their crap.
Unfortunately, you can't have meaty discussion in the abstract. It's quite hard to latch onto a good topic of discussion without sounding like you are talking about something in specific, in this case her.
My attempts to try to talk here really shouldn't be construed as intent on my part to tell her how to live her life.
It's impossible to work out best practices for talking about a thing without being allowed to talk about it at all. Replies like yours are basically the norm -- we can't talk generally about what works because someone might take it as an attempt to police their choices.
I've generally erred on the side of not commenting on her choices because I believe it's her life. But that de facto leaves me no path forward for talking about any of the issues involved.
Yes, she lives in China. But none of the articles I've seen are really about her life in China per se. They are mostly about her life online interacting with the western world. That's even what the title of the piece is about.
If she were merely limiting her life to China and not intentionally circumventing their rules to reach a western audience, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
It's one of the criticisms of her I gave above: you can't post on the internet looking for money and interaction from a western audience and then tell the west "You can't criticize how I choose to express myself!" And now she's been largely cut off from her western audience and their money and is complaining about that fact.
If she just wants to be a Chinese individual with a Chinese life and no western audience and no money from Westerners via Patreon/the internet, she is free to go do that.
The west only has any interest in what she does because she chooses to go to great lengths to reach out to the west.
You can't have it both ways. You and she need to pick one.
The problem is not the criticism, its the culture war and tactic of de-platforming anything uncomfortable. If she just got rude messages or even unfair articles in the NYT and it was left there, then she could just ignore them and continue doing what she likes doing - and what her audience likes watching.
It should also be noted that her latest deplatforming wasn't even related to her. Paypal cut off her alternative to gofundme because of other people they were funding. She was just collateral damage.
Nobody here is complaining about mere criticism. They are complaining about the very real attacks and successful attempts at censure and silencing.
I'm a pretty controversial figure and have been thrown off of a number of forums or simply left because it clearly wasn't going to be productive and was an excess of drama. I've also worked hard for a lot of years at figuring out how to sort my crap and try to find my voice in ways that made me acceptable in some spaces.
I was homeless for several years and my gender has absolutely been a barrier to me using hn as effectively as I wish I could for professional networking and developing my own online income.
No one has the right to do anything they want. No, she really can't take the position that she can do whatever the hell she wants and you can't stop her. You can do more of whatever the hell you want in private. When you want to do it in public, especially with an audience and for profit, you can either find ways to be acceptable to those gatekeepers or get censured and silenced and cut off from the money you think is your right when it's really not.
I've dealt with a lot of similar issues to Naomi Wu. I'm older than her and I've taken a different approach to trying to address such issues.
What I'm doing appears to be generally less drama and trouble than most women deal with and seems to be moving things in the right direction. So I think I know a few things about the problem space and my preference is to try to explore what actually works rather than spend all my time on my high horse acting like other people are just bad people and should stop being bad people for my convenience or whatever.
I think Naomi Wu would be vastly less controversial if she put a stop to promoting herself with soft porn style photos of her enormous and artificially enhanced breasts front and center on all her work where you can't escape it even if you try. I think she could continue to dress exactly the same and keep her artificially enhanced giant breasts and have photos of herself in her quirky and often scanty outfits and pretty much all the rest of it and see the drama drop substantially by making that one change.
Suggesting she be willing to make a single change in positioning for PR purposes isn't some kind of censure. It is really a fairly small detail.
I'm sorry you and she seem to not want to hear that. But, again, I suggest you pick one: either women can do whatever the fuck they want on the internet at all times without justification -- including me -- or people who expect to earn a living online and have a public life via the Internet need to find ways to be diplomatic and craft their image and their message in a socially palatable fashion as simply a practical matter -- including both me and Naomi Wu.
I have worked hard at finding a way forward on the latter. I'm increasingly unsympathetic to people who want to both silence me for disagreeing with them and simultaneously argue that women should be allowed to exercise their God given right to do any fucking thing they want. I'm a woman doing what I fucking want here. If you sincerely think that's how it's supposed to go, then a "You go girl!" is all I should hear from you.
Since that's not what I'm hearing, I suggest you reconsider your claims about what you imagine you believe.
This means that you seem incapable of being rational and critical of societal norms. Your independent variable is an individual, not society.
Voices like yours are well-meaning, and ultimately tools for oppression. If that sounds dramatic, just look at history.
I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board of Hacker News (under a different handle).
The meaning of that is likely lost on you. Suffice it to say, it hardly supports the status quo.
More like: resisting social change in the name of “pragmatism” is a very old pattern.
Imagine a dialogue like this before 1967: “Hey friend, I’m just being a pragmatist — interracial marriage is illegal. You could go to jail. Just break up and date someone else. Of course it’s not right, but what can you do? We have to understand that our actions have impact in the society we live within. Don’t take this to court, it’ll ruin your life.”
Without people disagreeing with this, without people disagreeing with status quo-aligned pragmatism, Loving vs Virginia would have never happened. Not would have the end of slavery, women’s suffrage, gay marriage, etc.
Please reflect and grow
Bitch was asking for it. Just look how she dresses. Slut.
But if this is typical of how you introduce yourself, then I can't say I'm exactly surprised that you get so much flak. It also makes me vastly less sympathetic to your many complaints about how other people behave.
I wish you had taken the time to read what I wrote in the article- it does address many of the appearance issues you are fixated on and find so distressing.
I also wish you had taken the time to contact me- I have a standing invitation pinned to the top of my Twitter profile to any woman with questions about my appearance to have a friendly private chat about it before coming to conclusions.
I was brought up properly. I am respectful to more experienced, more educated women in the community who have the specific background to evaluate the impact of my appearance and presentation. If Limor Fried, Becky Stern- any of a dozen women in academia that I am in contact with told me I was hurting other women with my shenanigans and to go put some pants on. You'd see nothing but a blur as I did just that. That would be the end of it. Period. The consensus has been it hurts no one but me, and it has been argued it helps others in ways it does not help me.
I am a precedent- if my appearance does not matter, then no one's does. Not butch, not femme, the large, the small, the disabled, trans- none of it is relevant. The work and personal conduct are what matters. As soon as it becomes about "I know it when I see it" people have just as much right to complain about "sexualized" clothes like even a modest skirt, high-heels, makeup. The incel community shares your concerns and would love the foot you've put in the door for them.
Yes, I am aware that things have reached the point where my appearance does hurt me far more than it helps. It's a terrible "promotional" tool- all of the more successful female creators on YouTube dress far more modestly. It has closed countless doors and I do accept that. I looked this way long before I was on Western social media. It is gender expression first and foremost and important to me for reasons you would not be able to understand. I have made clear in the article you were uninterested in reading that I will not explain it- because no one should have to.
My appearance being raised in a post about being unjustly targeted and endangered by media outlets is odd. How is it relevant? My work stands on its own- I have never pushed for inclusion in anything on any basis but my work. I don't think we want to say that those with an objectionable appearance during some part of their life, should be excluded from professional events during which it's neither relevant nor apparent. If someone is a furry on the weekends- that's their business. If someone wears hot pants on the weekends- that's their business. So long as they don't hurt anyone, follow the prevailing dress code of the event- that's where it ends. It's about the work- not your personal comfort with my gender expression.
You- personally are uncomfortable with my appearance. That's simply as far as it goes. It's not justification for anything. Not with me, not with anyone else. I'm ok with that- you personally don't have to be comfortable with my appearance. But wrapped in however many awkward disclaimers you like, you don't get to suggest that the unreasonable conduct of others is something I should silently endure because of it.
If you were to best describe what the role I serve in the community, what my "profession" is- it's literally "STEM ringer". We have a problem in STEM where pervasive stereotypes try to tie women's intelligence and competence to their gender expression. My job to fuck with that. My job is to look dim, act sharp & kick ass. My personal style IS professional.
I did not introduce myself to you. I posted on a public forum where I am a regular participant. As I already stated elsewhere, I did not seek you out because I'm sure you don't care what I think. Your remarks here strongly suggest my conclusion was spot on.
I'm not in the least bothered by your appearance. You are free to do as you please in that regard. I've already stated that elsewhere as well.
I don't actually care about your assertion that you know more important women than me whose opinions matter so much more than mine.
Your hostility is unlikely to further your cause. Coming at me like this is only serving to alienate me.
Your remarks here are simply convincing me that your ideology and mine are fundamentally incompatible.
I believe it suggests what I said in the comment above: you're putting the onus on women to "know what works" instead of on men/whoever.
> Your remarks here are simply convincing me that your ideology and mine are fundamentally incompatible.
That is why the world is in the state it's in.
Those aren't the droids she's looking for, so to speak.
> [...] women need to know what works and what doesn't.
I think men and women need to not treat people as sex objects regardless of how they dress. Saying that "women need to know 'what works'" is precisely victim-blaming, because it puts the onus on women, not men, to be responsible for men's behavior.
(Any genders above can be replaced with any other gender classification; it's irrelevant to the point.)
My point of view is that if men are being assholes because BOOBIES!!1! then men are being assholes, and it's men who need to know "what works." The world's rules are skewed at the moment: IMO telling women that they need to know "what works" attacks a symptom, not a problem.
[0] https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/11/04/report-jury-rules-...
[1] https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/08/03/flashback-new-york...