Seems like online twitter mobs and callouts are actually counterproductive to the "-isms" that employ them. Too bad but expect more of the same as we've basicslly given a global megaphone to any hyper-purist or power-tripper with a social media account. This stops when people have to pay a price for engaging in a cancel action.
They don't care cause they are not the same people.
It's like how 100% of women complaining about there not being enough girls in STEM, are themselves women who have chosen a non-STEM career.
It is absolutely unforgivable that we allow terms such as “mansplaining” to exist and be used unfettered and then on the other had deride their position because ! men not explaining things candidly !
Something has to give.
Obviously obnoxious behaviour should be curbed but the usage of mansplaing (and I would argue: the minting of the term when we have an equivalent in “condescending”)
I don’t even know what to say. I know I am rather shy to give advice to women because I’ve been bullied on Twitter for explaining things even when SOMEONE ASKED FOR CLARITY!
I think she is lamenting the situation. When in a similar situation I would do the same thing, I’m certain. I’m explaining why.
Before the Twitter mobs attacked me I would have been more open mouthed, now I’m aware of how sensitive people are and I try to avoid them feeling uncomfortable so I will choose my words much more carefully.
I think of "mansplaining" as men giving unsolicited advice rooted in assuming women are just stupid and failing to recognize that things work differently for women, so women can do the same things men do and get different results, which means women do things differently from men and sometimes there seems to be no good means for a woman to do anything.
Kind of like male construction workers can take their shirts off if they get too hot and female construction workers can't. (Real case I read about: Two female construction workers decided to wear bikini tops so they could take their shirts off in the heat and the busty, attractive lady was fired because this was a distraction potentially causing more accidents by the male construction workers. The skinny, flat chested girl wasn't fired because it wasn't literally turning heads when she pulled her shirt off and worked in a bikini top.)
Well, to be fair, a large busted female taking her top off at a construction site would be a distraction in a way that a flat-chested girl would not. In a way that safety could be affected. It would be an anomaly that would instigate a reflexive reaction.
So you're saying you agree with me: The world works different for women than men, so telling a woman "If you're sweating while working hard in the heat, take your top off." would be actively bad advice that assumes she's merely stupid for not doing so?
Men explain things to each other and there is a whole etiquette around doing it. Doesn't matter if the listener has a better, more original version of the story they will still listen. How else would oral histories get rehearsed and memorised.
It is ~~idiotic~~ alien to my world view to fire someone for having to take care of them selves not to overheat. Perhaps a better solution could have been providing more shade, rest, or cooling vests to everyone. And/or to re educate the male workforce not to be distracted so much that it would cause safety incidents. (I struggle to see how this would lead to serious issues. Is somebody going to be distracted so badly they are going to pour concrete over their colleague instead of in the hole?)
I’d say these situations show that we must have more diversity, not less, in all our interactions so that we learn to become more used to differences (insert race/gender/whatever else some people trip over.)
However idiotic it may seem, in a non-safe, litigating environment one can, sadly, expect these knee jerk reactions. The only way forward is to make our society a safer place. This probably relies on all parties becoming more aware of the effects of their actions as well on the receiving side having a buffer and being tolerant such that we don’t get a cascade effect.
Edit: I mean the above paragraph in the sense that just like aircraft investigations are about finding a root cause instead of blaming, discussions should be more about achieving harmony together or to agree to disagree.
I'm really glad to see this here. I don't have a better word readily available than sexism for trying to talk about patterns like this but when I use the word sexism, I think people think I mean "Men are intentionally exclusionary assholes just to be assholes because they simply hate women." and that's never what I'm trying to say.
I find my gender is a barrier to getting traction and my experience is that it's due to patterns of this sort and not because most men intentionally want me to fail. But the cumulative effect of most men erring on the side of protecting themselves and not wanting to take risks to engage with me meaningfully really adds up over time and I think that tremendously holds women back generally.
I think gendered patterns of social engagement also contributed to the Theranos debacle. I've said that before and I feel like it tends to get misunderstood as well. (Though in the case of Theranos it runs a lot deeper in that she was actually sleeping with an investor.)
Well the situation in the article seems like a good example, you think the female ceo should swap with the male co founder. You're invested but not massively and you've not really known either for years.
The only path forward is for enough high-profile, hyper-woke behavior examples to get negative public exposure. As long as men are afraid of accidentally becoming the target of the next donglegate, it's safer to just not engage.
I agree with what I think you are going for: That this super blamey "hyper woke" bullshit needs to stop if we are going to make any real forward progress on issues like this one.
In my experience, one good example of how to do it right is vastly more powerful in solving social ills than any number of people being hung high and scapegoated for getting it wrong.
In fact, I generally feel that scapegoating people in a system where there are no good answers is actively counterproductive and helps keep things stuck. Hanging someone high for not knowing "the right answer" in a system that gives zero good options for how to handle X implicitly suggests that good answers exist and implicitly denies the reality that "We don't know how to do this dance. We don't have an answer for that."
It implicitly suggests there is a means to get this right when the reality is there isn't. So it actively distracts from real problem solving.
I would like to see more real problem solving in this space. As a dirt poor woman, I have a vested interest in seeing a world where there are answers for how to do this dance.
So far, I am mostly coming up empty under circumstances that suggest to me that my behavior is not the problem. The problem is the lack of good answers for how to do this dance.
Completely agree. Scapegoating can't have positive effects. At best, it causes what we see here: people staying silent in fear. At worst, it just alienates people and causes them to dig their heels in, doubling down on whatever bad behavior they're scapegoated for because they've got nothing left to lose. It rarely, if ever, actually improves behavior.
I recently had a conversation where the lady I was talking to basically said (paraphrasing for brevity) "all men bad, always" and I'm really not sure what she even wanted to achieve. Some kind of perceived revenge maybe? I ended up disengaging and it left me feeling rather deflated. If I'm bad by default and there's nothing I can do to change that, why care at all? Luckily I know that most women are much more reasonable so I will continue to strive to treat everybody equally and how I want to be treated.
But I do worry sometimes that even that can backfire, because I've witnessed another situation (on Twitter) where a lady complained that men who didn't get her joke tweet were mansplaining about how what she wrote was wrong, that they were explaining her (purposeful) error to her because she was a woman. Except others replied with their own versions of the joke and they too were getting "mainsplained" too, even though many were themselves men. That is, some people were misunderstanding the joke and commenting, it wasn't anything to do with her being a woman. But she turned it into a gender issue.
So if I want to treat everyone equal, but that equal treatment can be seen as mansplaining or other negative gendered thing, that makes me more likely to disengage out of fear and then I'm not treating people equally, but not out of malice or feeling of superiority, just out of fear...
Its a big problem and I don't know the answer either.
I've been contemplating your remark and how or if to reply.
I recently had a conversation where the lady I was talking to basically said (paraphrasing for brevity) "all men bad, always" and I'm really not sure what she even wanted to achieve. Some kind of perceived revenge maybe? I ended up disengaging and it left me feeling rather deflated. If I'm bad by default and there's nothing I can do to change that, why care at all?
This is a really thorny issue -- that there are people who have been so hurt that they see no path forward. Trying to reach them is really difficult and complicated and puts you at risk of being burned, which tends to leave them painted into a corner that they can't find their way out of.
I'm glad you know other women that are more reasonable and do not feel like giving up over this one incident.
But I do worry sometimes that even that can backfire, because I've witnessed another situation (on Twitter) where a lady complained that men who didn't get her joke tweet were mansplaining about how what she wrote was wrong, that they were explaining her (purposeful) error to her because she was a woman. Except others replied with their own versions of the joke and they too were getting "mainsplained" too, even though many were themselves men. That is, some people were misunderstanding the joke and commenting, it wasn't anything to do with her being a woman. But she turned it into a gender issue.
To be fair to her, it gets really hard to not attribute certain patterns to your gender. It gets really hard to try to make that nuanced distinction that "Not everything is about sexism." and this also ends up being a thorny issue because trying to tell someone who is in that head space that they are wrong gets experienced by them as just another means to undermine them and gaslight them.
I think the best strategy is to try to avoid talking to women about their "personal" stuff. Try to not make it into a "personal" relationship when it really isn't.
I lived a really private life for a lot of years because I was a homemaker for roughly two decades and what I eventually came up with was this idea that women generally get treated like "private" individuals and men generally get treated like "public" people and the way men and women get socialized reinforces that pattern.
So men frequently have "personal" conversations with women in public settings that they wouldn't have with a man or in a way that they wouldn't have with a man and it happens so often that women don't realize "This is not normal and it is not good for your work life."
It's normal for them in their lives and they don't see that this is a problem.
Men focus on the importance of networking and women tend to be better at the social thing and at making personal connections and that tends to be one of their strengths. It is one of mine and I have been baffled and frustrated that it doesn't turn into professional connections.
People talk to me and they want to see me as their new best friend for life or their one true love or something like that and it ends up being enormously frustrating for me because they generally don't have as much to give back to me as I have to give to them in that regard and what I most need is more income and that's never something they want to help with.
People don't want to pay money to their friends for their friendship. Men don't want to pay money to their girlfriend for being their girlfriend.
And people also don't want to open doors for me professionally once it veers into that "personal relationship" space. And it's not simply because they are being selfish jerks or something.
If a man is sleeping with a woman or hopes to, it can be hard to vouch for her. It can be hard to overcome the public perception that "You're just saying that because you are sleep...
Thanks for the reply, it will take a bit of time to digest that!
For what it’s worth, I’ve always been of the opinion that it’s unhealthy to base your social life around work colleagues (for many reasons), so while I strive to get on well with and be friendly with people I work with, I’ve never seen work as a place to find my primary friends groups or people to date or whatever. It’s just too messy, not just for the two people involved but for everyone around them too. I think that attitude has helped me in my interactions with women in places I’ve worked because it meant that I already don’t see them as a potential partner but rather as a professional colleague just like the men there. I try to just treat people how I want to be treated, regardless of gender or race or anything else, and from other conversations with women, I’ve been told that the best way to “help” is to do just that and to watch out for when they are being ignored and to help amplify their voices in those cases (eg if men are not giving women a chance to say their bit in a meeting, to say something like hey I’d really like to hear what she has to say, can you please stop interrupting, or whatever). That all seemed super reasonable to me and I’ve taken it on board (but haven’t been in a situation to put it into practice since, due to covid).
But these two more recent interactions did give me pause and made me question whether I would get into trouble for doing what I believe is the right thing... which brings us here.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to reply, I find these insights enlightening, even if they’re your 1am thoughts :)
PS I find networking pretty hard myself. I guess for very different reasons though...
I think the best strategy is to try to avoid talking to
women about their "personal" stuff. Try to not make it
into a "personal" relationship when it really isn't.
...
So men frequently have "personal" conversations with women
in public settings that they wouldn't have with a man or
in a way that they wouldn't have with a man and it happens
so often that women don't realize "This is not normal and
it is not good for your work life."
This is an interesting perspective, and it's something that I found weird when I started working with Americans - they're so cagey about their non-work lives compared to how people are in Ireland. With most of my previous co-workers I'd know their backstories and their partners/spouses/kids names, even if I've never met them, but with my current (mostly American) team unless I actually ask people this stuff they absolutely only ever talk about work, unless they have a story or two that from their real lives that fits with their work persona
I'm part Irish and part Cherokee and part German. That seems to be a factor in the challenges I've faced in trying to make my life work.
To me, talking with people is a really normal activity, but it's gone weird places with people who seem to think we have a super intimate relationship because I talked with them a little. And they reflect that back to me as being far more conversation than they've had with anyone in ages and now want to treat me like their personal possession or some nonsense.
Just being less share-y and drawing certain boundaries seems to be the only effective approach. Being what I think of as personable, polite and diplomatic just goes really weird places at times and then I can't get rid of people who latch onto me like obsessed nutcases.
Reading up on some Irish playwright helped me feel more at peace with some things.
I'm American. Born and raised here and spent most of my life here. But I tend to get misread a lot by Americans and tend to hit it off better with foreigners, third culture kids, people who have traveled a lot, etc.
Culture definitely plays a factor. I’m not actually American and my day to day isn’t nearly as bad as what I described in previous comments, but I do often work with and interact with Americans, which is mostly where my comments came from. The other thing is that there’s a slow Americanisation happening in some circles so I also want to be prepared. Luckily outside of the interactions I’ve mentioned and a few others, things have mostly been fairly smooth with people being quite understanding and willing to work together to improve things. But I do see it, regardless, which is why I’m here.
Anyway, your comments have given me lots to think about. Thanks! Hopefully you find ways to improve things for yourself too.
I think the pattern that has recently been abandoned is trial by jury instead of rule by emotional, angry, partially-informed mob. If you see people in your sphere of influence jumping into a 15-minutes-of-hate session, call them to the mat.
It’s easy. Investment is a math game. What is the upside and downside of either action?
First choice, I remain silent. Best case, the female CEO kills it and I make some money. Worst case she flops and I lose my investment. Potentially great upside, relatively minor downside.
Second choice, I suggest a change. Best case the company does well and I make money. Worst case I’m labeled a sexist and I’m effectively ejected from the startup world. Potentially great upside, but unlimited losses.
Unfortunately I think the reality will be that male founders may get even more funding than before, which will then lead to a potentially wider gap.
And then the cycle will continue, a misread of the situation as sexism or more accusations of sexism than before will lead to more people staying with the easy choice of being silent.
I'm reminded of that quote, "better to be silent and be thought of as an idiot than to open your mouth and remove any doubt people have." The same thing is true for investors but with idiot replaced by sexist.
Actually, biggest upside is, you make a change, the business succeeds because of your change, and you not only make huge profits on the business but also continue to cement your reputation as a top tier advisor.
Third choice: you invest in creating a better relationship with the female founders so that you’re capable of expressing your concern without appearing sexist.
I’m not sure why female founders are being portrayed as a different species? They’re humans. They know about sexism. They know when what they’re seeing is sexism vs critical feedback. And they will understand if you express your concerns with that.
The path of least resistance requires less work? I don't disagree with your view on this but it seems like the incentives simply aren't aligned to learn how to dodge an ever evolving anti-sexist culture that is interpreted as having different communication rules by different people. If it was as easy as like "don't misgender people" or something sure, fine everyone can learn the rules of the protocol in under 15 minutes. There is no reason why anyone can't do that. The rules for interacting aren't this simple though, and they are often differently interpreted by different people. Learning how to communicate in a way that makes every person feel comfortable often just isn't worth the time investment. If we want people to take this other option it has to have significant and demonstrable positive incentives that make people want to invest the time.
It's only sexism if it happens to a woman, therefore the word "feminism" itself isn't inherently sexist.
It's only racist if it happens to someone of color. White people can't be discriminated against by definition. Anyone who believes in "reverse discrimination" is a "racist" who has "too much entitled privilege."
Be quiet and accept the prevailing, correct opinions and beliefs, or be labeled and canceled. There is no debate and there is no discussion because the ideological mafia has already decided what beliefs are proper today. Oh and anyone who doesn't renounce yesterday's micro aggressions should be forced to resign if they don't apologize hard enough four times.
The left is a circular firing squad that doesn't have any loyalty.
PS: It sucks that we're here because we all need decency, awareness, and fair treatment. What's unhelpful is retribution masquerading as movements for fairness.
That's not quite what I meant. I simply don't think the prevailing narrative--"men can't/don't understand/recognize sexism and (all) women do" and "whites can't/don't understand/recognize racism and (all) black/other minority do"--is either true or useful for moving forward together.
I do believe that in the US sexism is generally one directional due to the intrinsic imbalance in power. There are stereotypes about males, and they are harmful in some cases, but generally because more men have power the harm to women is more pervasive and severe.
Same thing with respect to race and white people, actually.
Sexism exists and affects both genders. Imbalances in power mean the effects of sexism are generally felt more by women than by men. The narrative that men cannot understand or recognize sexism, or have an inferior ability to do so, is not supported by the facts. It is also harmful to overcoming the problems of sexism by men toward women.
I hold a similar view with respect to the relationship between racism and white people.
I would only deal with women founders by Zoom recorded or in-person with several other people present. No closed doors and no alone time because it's a liability waiting to happen.
Regardless of gender, the other issue is if they're crazy or unable to accept feedback, then they may try to make you look bad. It's probably a good idea to socially screen all founders carefully so you know who you're dealing with.
> They know when what they’re seeing is sexism vs critical feedback.
One can't possibly guarantee that every founder (female or not) knows that, and in fact, TFA implies that many don't. So the possibility that at least one of them will think the investor sexist for giving feedback is unfortunately not zero. And, of course, this option doesn't seem to consider the possibility that even if the founder takes the criticism at face value, someone else might not.
In light of that, the third choice you present seems to be GP's second choice after all.
> So the possibility that at least one of them will think the investor sexist for giving feedback is unfortunately not zero.
There is a nonzero risk in any social interaction that involves giving critical feedback. The way you manage that risk is by investing in healthy relationships, not by perceiving literally half of humanity as being too risky to be worthy of critical feedback.
I’m not quite sure what to say to you. Living life involves risks. It sure seems like one of those risks is being deliberately amplified to be used as an excuse to “not even bother” with female founders.
> There is a nonzero risk in any social interaction that involves giving critical feedback.
Which leads me back to GP's point: there are only two choices. I take it that you're saying that the risk of the second choice can be ignored if taking some steps, but the consequences remain the same, and GP didn't speak about the thresholds or ways to improve the odds. He only mentioned that the risk exists and isn't worth it for him, and you disagree, but that's not much to go on.
> I’m not quite sure what to say to you. Living life involves risks. It sure seems like one of those risks is being deliberately amplified to be used as an excuse to “not even bother” with female founders.
Conversely, I'm not sure what's being implied here so I don't know how to reply.
For what it's worth, TFA isn't saying that investors aren't bothering with female founders. They are, but are being careful with the feedback they give.
ETA: Forgot to mention, the way you're suggesting investors to "manage" the risk not only doesn't remove the risk for investors, but it also leaves female founders at a disadvantage anyway: male founders can get critical feedback right away, female founders have to wait until a rapport is built.
> Which leads me back to GP's point: there are only two choices. I take it that you're saying that the risk of the second choice should be ignored, but the consequences remain the same, and GP didn't speak about the thresholds or ways to improve the odds. He only mentioned that the risk exists and isn't worth it for him, and you disagree, but that's not much to go on.
What I'm trying to demonstrate is that the framing of the choices involved as just the two is misleading and not at very useful. Not sure what you're trying to imply by going through the pedantry of demonstrating that what I said is "actually covered by the second choice". If that makes you happy, let it be so, its a false dichotomy.
> Conversely, I'm not sure what to reply to this. It seems to me like you're implying that the people who are discussing this are "sexists looking for an excuse", but that sounds like an uncharitable interpretation, so I might as well ask if you could clarify what you meant by this.
I stated a possibility for why the people are behaving in the way it has been described. The reasoning given seems to be "some women founders may interpret it as sexism", which to me seems like an uncharitable interpretation.
I am trying to point out that this only makes sense to an audience of males. The reason could be equally viewed as "some men investors do not want to deal with women founders", which is another uncharitable interpretation.
> For what it's worth, TFA isn't saying that investors aren't bothering with female founders. They are, but are being careful with the feedback they give.
The article is very clearly stating that investors are withholding from giving the kind of advice that could decide between whether the company succeeds or fails. I would actually say that's worse than outright rejection to work with female founders, as investors play an important role in filtering out bad ideas and convincing founders of good ideas.
> There is a nonzero risk in any social interaction that involves giving critical feedback. The way you manage that risk is by investing in healthy relationships, not by perceiving literally half of humanity as being too risky to be worthy of critical feedback.
Depends on the quantum of risk.
I'll make someone unhappy at most but the truth will help them? Sure.
I can be labelled as sexist and it might end my career? Hard nope.
I know multiple white men who, when passed up for an opportunity, will say it's bullshit, they deserved that opportunity, and there must be {politics|nepotism|treachery} for this to happen. The difference is that they can't claim sexism, and there's no word they can throw at the person in charge of the decision to strike back on social media the way labeling someone sexist / racist can.
> I know multiple white men who, when passed up for an opportunity, will say it's bullshit, they deserved that opportunity, and there must be {politics|nepotism|treachery} for this to happen. The difference is that they can't claim sexism,
White men can and do blame sexism and racism for their failure to advance all the time, and have been doing so since the day when overt discrimination in their favor stopped being a near-universal norm.
EDIT: of course, the audience that is favorably predisposed to such complaints is very different to the ones predisposed the same way toward claims from other groups, but it is very large and socially influential.
>White men can and do blame sexism and racism for their failure to advance all the time, and have been doing so since the day when overt discrimination in their favor stopped being a near-universal norm.
Yes, everyone is guilty of this. When you mess up, blame someone else. That's how you get stuck regardless of your race or gender. You'll be on a crusade against the wrong thing and never achieve anything.
And worst case for women: I would not invest in a company that would potentially make me evaluate such options.
Indirectly: Men should be wary of partnering up with women because investors might see such a partnership as "danger zone" and pass.
I KNOW sexism exists and should be eradicated. Unfortunately the current way of doing things cause lots of unintended consequences for women. I (a man), for one, refuse to put myself in a position where I'll have to make explicit decisions for men vs. women on the merit of their work because there is a chance that if the woman "loses" they'll label me a sexist (they can genuinely feel that way, but I know that my intentions are not towards gender discrimination - unfortunately there is no way to convince her of that if that happens). That means I tend to not work with women, even though I hate passing on people that will do the work well. If they have a history with such activism, it is worse because whatever happens, if they are terminated for any reason, it will most probably be labeled discrimination. If they have a social media following, I'm screwed. So it is difficult. I don't want to pass on them but the potential consequences for any misunderstanding are too large. I don't want to live and work while walking on eggshells.
We solve sexism by creating unequal opportunities instead. After all, fairness and honesty are worse than not creating a facade to play along with societies' outrage induced rules.
I do not live in the Anglo Saxon world; know this well.
I would say so, and the thought that anyone would level some of these weird gender arguments I've primarily seen from Anglo-Saxon news sources wouldn't cross my mind, for it has never happened to me in my life. — and I am not entirely sure as to how much I should believe such stories I read on the internet that speak of how seemingly every single issue in Anglo-Saxon culture is phrased in terms of an imaginary gender war.
I have never in such professional disputes in my life felt as though gender were used as an excuse, or reason, I have never in my life been accused of sexism when I criticized female staffmembers, and I have never seen it happen to anyone else either, I have never seen anyone go that route as a matter of defence.
Perhaps, a difference is that Dutch professional analyses ten to be more numerical, and that the Anglo-Saxon more often wings it based on feeling rather than numbers. It is o course far harder to argue with numbers.
Of course there is a cultural difference between how much numbers speak in different cultures.
What you want the world to be isn't what the world is, and in this case it's true, as by law in the Netherlands, various promotional and termination choices are required to be justified by numbers, which is not the case in Anglo-Saxon countries, where employers are more so at liberty to subjectively assess whom they wish to promote, and whom not.
Yes, and I'm sure the Dutch robotically compute such numbers, and there is rarely or never any subjectivity in their decision making that is justified ex post facto by clever accounting.
You're attacking a straw man of things I never said.
I simply said that in Dutch decisions of whom to promote, numbers play a greater sway than in Anglo-Saxon promotions; the claim you are attacking is another altogether.
Your remarks kind of sound pretty dismissive of and attacking towards Anglo-Saxon culture and I think some people get tired of hearing about supposed "Dutch superiority." The Dutch don't have everything beautifully and perfectly sorted, though they do appear to have a better track record in certain respects than average.
The Dutch cultural tendency to be very blunt is probably not helping your case.
I'm leaving this comment in hopes of being personally helpful to you as an individual and it's probably foolish for me to do so. It would probably be better for me to say nothing, but it's just kind of a pet peeve of mine so to speak, so I am doing it anyway.
> Your remarks kind of sound pretty dismissive of and attacking towards Anglo-Saxon culture and I think some people get tired of hearing about supposed "Dutch superiority." The Dutch don't have everything beautifully and perfectly sorted, though they do appear to have a better track record in certain respects than average.
This entire thread is a sea of doomsday tears of fatalism and how bad it is, and how the culture is on a collision course with death, and mine was the perspective that I'm skeptical that it's truly as bad as they claim.
I'm far less dismissive of their own culture than they are.
But indeed, what they're tired of is not dismissing Anglo-Saxon culture, but that an outsider does so and having to hear that it's not the entire world.
They're own dismissals are far greater than mine.
> The Dutch cultural tendency to be very blunt is probably not helping your case.
My case? is it not further evidence of my thesis that there are cultural differences at play here?
One may assume that is is only to be expected that in a blunter culture, one would be less inclined to use sexism as an excuse when one be criticized.
Indeed, the Anglo-Saxon's famed tendency for politeness might very well be a contributing factor, if again, it truly be the case that it is so common for sexism to be used as an excuse when criticism be leveled.
> I'm leaving this comment in hopes of being personally helpful to you as an individual and it's probably foolish for me to do so. It would probably be better for me to say nothing, but it's just kind of a pet peeve of mine so to speak, so I am doing it anyway.
You are free to do so, and I am free to disagree and point out the opposite.
From my perspective, it comes across as a petulant child who excessively and unreasonably talks about a culture that is failing, but lashes out defensively when an outsider chimes in and says “It might be bad, but I'm not sure it's as bad as you claim.”, for then it is an outsider who does so, and apparently that crosses the line, not the dismissal in and of itself.
I have a serious medical condition and I'm sometimes pretty impaired while posting here.
When I said it was sort of a pet peeve of mine, that perhaps sounds like I meant I was criticizing you and that's really not what I meant. I meant it aggravates me to see someone post in good faith, get downvoted to hell until they seem to be pissed off and no one will reach out to them and say "This doesn't work well on this forum for this reason."
I occasionally do try to make that effort in part because I'm a demographic outlier so I don't readily fit in here and have always had to really work at it and I sometimes get a lot of downvotes for what seems to be simply being a different demographic.
This forum skews culturally American to some degree. There do seem to be a fair number of Dutch members who post, but it is run by an American company and that helps shape the dominant culture here.
I'm American but I'm a former military wife. Like the Dutch, I tend to be pretty blunt.
Some people find me to be refreshingly direct. Others find me to be rude, crude and socially unacceptable. It seems to have little to do with my behavior and more to do with their cultural expectations.
I was only trying to tell you your bluntness will tend to be interpreted by most Americans as rudeness and disrespect, though some people with military experience will be more tolerant.
It's always a risk to say something to a total stranger and that's likely why it's common for someone to get downvoted to hell and no one tries to talk to them about that in some kind of helpful fashion: Because it can get misinterpreted and make the problem worse and make you a target of their ire.
I don't really care. I tend to do what makes sense to me and accept that sometimes it bites me in the ass.
Unlike a lot of people, I don't have to sit around justifying my guilty conscience. I don't have one. I don't stand idly by and say "Not my problem."
I'm sorry this didn't go well. I don't intend to discuss it with you further. If your take away from this is that I attacked you rather than that I was trying to reach out and bridge the cultural barrier you will face on HN, welp, you win some, you lose some.
Indeed, the Anglo-Saxon's famed tendency for politeness might very well be a contributing factor, if again, it truly be the case that it is so common for sexism to be used as an excuse when criticism be leveled
So if a Brit/American wants to insult you they'll do it politely/obliquely, the flipside being that politeness can often be misinterpreted as an insult. That won't happen with the Dutch, because if they want to insult you they'll just insult you directly. Is that what you mean? If so - haha, v interesting!
This is anonymous, so I'll speak my mind. Maybe it's helpful to you.
They call it Dutch superiority because they are superior. I immigrated from the United States, and I would never go back at this point. People are still people here, but society functions, and that is because people are critical. Education is better, family relationships are better, infrastructure is better, treatment of the poor and less fortunate is better. And OP is right in that you clammed up, in precisely the way the article describes, at the slightest criticism of Anglo-Saxon culture, despite the fact that you have been describing just how much you dislike said culture in your voluminous comments.
My advice is to start being critical if you want your culture to survive. We really do see how silly you all are, and it is really more sad than anything. Fijne dag!
Note that the discussion was about Anglo-Saxon culture, not the U.S.A., which is a beast of it's own and the problems you speak of are not Anglo-Saxon culture, but extreme capitalism.
You will find many of the benefits of which you speak in other Anglo-Saxon nations such as Canada as well. In fact, Canada ranks far higher than the Netherlands in social mobility indices, and social mobility in the Netherlands is not very high compared to other developed nations, only average, but social mobility is very low in the U.S.A..
The arguments you raised here were not of anything that was spoken of in this discussion, but of how much less capitalist the Netherlands is than the U.S.A., which would similarly apply to any other developed nations.
The topic spoke of gender relationships, which is entirely unrelated, and I remain that I'm sceptical that it's truly as bad as claimed, for I have seen as many anecdotes that point to the opposite from Anglo-Saxons.
But yes, I have seen many an Anglo-Saxon rant on the internet that speaks of a ridiculous, dystopian doom scenario in Anglo-Saxon gender relationships, where the male cannot walk outside with his own children alone, lest he be arrested on the spot for child abduction, and the female cannot buy his own automative vehicle, for the salesman would first ask for permission of a male relative ere he be allowed to do so. — these stories seem very exaggerated, but I have certainly read stories that go to this length.
I have also read counter anecdotes that claim that there is no real problem, and that much of it seems to be outright whining of how bad it is for the home team makes me sceptical that gender relationships are truly as bad as they claim in the Anglo-Saxon world. What I do think is perhaps the big problem is the tribalist nature and tensions, and how quickly people see ghosts, and complain on being mistreated on their tribe. The Anglo-Saxon seems to very often be a team player by nature, an be quick to shout sexism or racism, when other factors might be at play.
I would personally never live in Canada either. As someone who can say from experience what this culture is really like, I tend to agree with the dystopian doom scenario and that entails all of North America. Try it for yourself if you like.
You really cannot speak your mind with a female coworker in the United States. My guard is fully up because I have experienced numerous difficulties with "just being myself" that have never caused issues here. Threatening to go to HR to get one's way is something that I have experienced personally and seen multiple times with peers, and the men never win. However, this is in the context of startup/tech culture, and it is a worse problem in this area.
In relationships, they know that they can always take the children. The government/society fully supports them regardless of the circumstances. A big female content creator in the U.S., neekolul, went on twitter to trash her ex-husband despite the fact that she was tried and convicted of felony domestic violence for stabbing him during a fight, but her fellow female content creators shrugged and supported her anyway. It's the most horrible example of many, but the point is, it's real. The people who don't believe it are delusional or have an abusive partner themselves.
I'm curious. Do you have any colleagues from the UK or from southern Europe? How do you treat them? I am similarly guarded with women from these places, although not nearly as much as I felt I had to be in the United States.
> You really cannot speak your mind with a female coworker in the United States.
Perhaps, but this is a different matter to how the poor are treated, wouldn't you say?
Do you feel that Canada also treats the poor poorly? or that it has merely also inherited Anglo-Saxon gender chivalry? As I'm sceptical of the former, but not the latter.
> In relationships, they know that they can always take the children. The government/society fully supports them regardless of the circumstances. A big female content creator in the U.S., neekolul, went on twitter to trash her ex-husband despite the fact that she was tried and convicted of felony domestic violence for stabbing him during a fight, but her fellow female content creators shrugged and supported her anyway. It's the most horrible example of many, but the point is, it's real. The people who don't believe it are delusional or have an abusive partner themselves.
Well, these would indeed be some of the doomsday stories of tribalism and gender relationships I often hear of Anglo-Saxon culture where everyone has decided who is right and who is wrong based on little more than “What team do you play for?”, that I have never experienced in the Netherlands.
But, then again, such stories, as in this case, seem to once again come from a team, and are anecdotal, so perhaps exaggerated. The other team frequently paints a doomsday scenario in the opposite direction, of which I am as sceptical as I am of this one due to it.
> I'm curious. Do you have any colleagues from the UK or from southern Europe? How do you treat them? I am similarly guarded with women from these places, although not nearly as much as I felt I had to be in the United States.
None that spent their formative years outside of the Netherlands, no.
The one very mild experience I had in life with someone who did seem to on some level believe in “gender relations” was indeed with a friend of mine who had Finnish parents, and was born in the U.K. but lived in the Netherlands since four years old and spoke Dutch accentlessly. Perhaps it's a coincidence that this is the one person who had such perspectives, but perhaps it isn't; it does make one wonder that the one person happened to be a natal foreigner, but his foreign ancestry was seldom something that came up.
There were certainly not gendered excuses or accusations of sexism, but there were sometimes remarks in the vein of “Are you even aware of that I'm female in how you treat me?”, at least initially, after which it mostly went away.
No, I'm attacking your claim that "numbers play a greater sway" in Dutch employment/investment practices. The claim can be technically true, in that laws or cultural norms might require an employer to put numbers to paper to justify a promotion or termination (for example), while at the same time being misleading, in that the numbers can easily be used as an ex post facto justification.
Bluntly, I am skeptical that the Dutch are any better at belaying their subjective biases than any other culture--anglo, asian, or otherwise. You may believe you are simply bluntly stating a truth as you see it, but the reality is that you are displaying your own blinders (and comically acting superior while doing so).
Your culture produced Pim and Geert: bluntly, it's hilarious that you think you're stating any truth, here.
> No, I'm attacking your claim that "numbers play a greater sway" in Dutch employment/investment practices.
An how would this claim be attacked by this passage:
> Yes, and I'm sure the Dutch robotically compute such numbers, and there is rarely or never any subjectivity in their decision making that is justified ex post facto by clever accounting.
How the numbers are derived is completely unrelated to how large the role they play is.
> The claim can be technically true, in that laws or cultural norms might require an employer to put numbers to paper to justify a promotion or termination (for example), while at the same time being misleading, in that the numbers can easily be used as an ex post facto justification.
So you aren't attacking the claim itself; you're merely saying that the claim is misleading.
> Bluntly, I am skeptical that the Dutch are any better at belaying their subjective biases than any other culture--anglo, asian, or otherwise.
Perhaps you are, but again, I never said anything of the sort, so I'm again pointing to that you are attacking a straw man.
As an side-note. I am sceptical of the existence of such a thing as “Asian culture.”; — I personally find that Chinese culture is further removed from, say, Japanese culture, than Japanese culture is from, say, English culture, especially after the cultural revolution in China. — I have viewed several cultural indicies which attempt to numerically classify various properties of various cultures and they do indeed tend to place Japan closer to England than to China in many respects.
> Your culture produced Pim and Geert: bluntly, it's hilarious that you think you're stating any truth, here.
None of which has anything to do with anything I said.
I find your claim that you aren't attacking straw men to be even more mystifying if you think this is an argument against what I said. This is an argument of the level of “If evolution be true? then how come atheists couldn't stop 9/11?”. — this is an absolutely bizarre connexion you made here of two completely unrelated matters.
> How the numbers are derived is completely unrelated to how large the role they play is.
It is not, actually; it's fundamentally important. Your claim is in two parts: 1) numbers play a larger role in this context in Dutch society; 2) this is a direct cause of lower/non-existent incidence of, e.g., accusations of sexism.
I'm only suggesting that it's terribly easy for someone to use numbers to justify after the fact a decision based on sexism, and that I'm skeptical this condition is absent in Dutch culture.
> So you aren't attacking the claim itself; you're merely saying that the claim is misleading.
No, I'm not calling the claim misleading, I noted that the numbers used to justify a decision can be misleading (which is, in fact, a direct attack against your claim).
Do you really think that all cultures have the same focus on analytical and rational thinking? As an American that moved to the Netherlands, this is comical.
Yes, it’s a question we all need to ask ourselves. If you have kids though or plan to live more than a decade or more, the choice is hopefully one of bending towards the greater good for society rather than the individual.
"Son, you may not understand why you're getting taunted, bullied online, and threatened by anonymous people with violence now, but in 15 years you'll come to appreciate what I stood up for and that'll erase all of this traumatic social ostracism I brought on you inadvertently and without consulting you by sticking to my guns."
“Son.. if there’s ever a tough choice in life, choose the easy way out. Don’t think about what’s right and wrong, that’s not important at all. Just think about yourself. Keep your head down and just accept that the way things are are the way they’ll always be. No social progress is worth your individual discomfort.”
Great parenting! /s
Thank God you weren’t leading the civil rights movement.
Capitulation is a much greater enemy than anything you’re afraid of.
Or. We are living in a car and I don't know if we will have dinner today, but let's keep our chin up while we dumpster dive for food because we stood for what is right
I remember my dad telling me that if he had been accused of being a Communist during the McCarthy red scare, he would have said or done whatever was asked of him (named names, etc) so that he could keep working and supporting his family. I thought it was a cowardly perspective but now I'm a father myself I totally get it.
Funny enough, my great-grandfather was Joe Welch who famously stood up to McCarthy. It's hard for me to imagine him not standing up to those baseless accusations and waiting/hoping for someone else to do it.
sure it is. you take advantage of it. some white/east asian woman at work being annoying and you feel you can't voice your grievances with HR without being labelled sexist? deepfake her saying some nastyness and put it up on youtube. make as much money as you can and give nothing back to anyone who isn't your own immediate family and teach your children to do the same. amass all the wealth you can, subvert and destroy your competition and never be alone with a woman who isn't your mother, sister, wife, or daughter. do not hire anyone who isn't a white or asian man, lest they think you stepped on their toes and get the woke twitter mob to harass your family.
The society must work for each individual, if it doesn't, it causes issues like this.
That's why the Soviets failed, their incentive system totally doesn't work for majority of the individuals. Individuals are not to fault here as in there.
For that particular situation, I'd stay silent. I agree there's a risk, and that this is a problem.
Longer term though, I'd make sure we hire female investors into my VC fund. I'd take them along the journey of investing with this startup, and if I felt a female CEO needed to be replaced with a man, I'd discuss this with my investment partners. Any harsh feedback, if given, would be coming from all of us, and a mixed panel would be harder to accuse of sexism.
Any harsh feedback, if given, would be coming from all of us, and a mixed panel would be harder to accuse of sexism.
Nope, a hostile founder/CEO will pick the men out of the panel and sick the mob on them. The women on the panel are either oppressed or anti-feminism. The mob doesn't care and won't hear the whole story.
> a mixed panel would be harder to accuse of sexism
That's not how this works. People eager to engage in this kind of ideological battle always have Internalised Misogyny as an argument to fall back on in this situation.
But I believe I shouldn't have to literally starve and be homeless for years for the crime of being born with girl bits between my legs, which is more or less part of my back story here.
I did freelance work to accommodate my health situation. I was also the apparently highest ranked woman on HN and failing to turn that into professional connections and professional development and adequate income.
I believe my gender is a factor in that failing to become what I desired. Every single time I comment on that, without fail, someone acts like I am utterly full of shit and I get really awful and dismissive replies that completely fail to acknowledge that maybe I have a point and maybe my gender actually was a factor in my low income. (And still is.)
Online relationships have a shred of value of what a personal one does. I don't know you but to me it sounds more like you didn't want to work for peanuts at a company and instead risked being an entrepreneur or something.
"I'm a freelancer. I polish resumes, I do a little website work and I do some writing."
Polishing resumes and website work don't sound like highly paid jobs, regardless of your ranking on HN. This is probably bigger issue then your gender in your income.
I'm not claiming and have never claimed that my gender is the sole factor. I also have a serious medical condition and that's a big problem.
But the issue is that I get told, both implicitly and explicitly, that my gender isn't really an issue at all. Even your comment basically hand waves off my gender as a factor.
I appear to be the highest ranked woman on HN. I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board.
I don't even need that much income. If I could just get enough resume work, I would be content to do resume work part-time at $50/page. That would work for me and I can't even arrange that.
I believe my gender is a factor in my failure to adequately meet my financial needs. It is not at all constructive for people to keep telling me the many, many other reasons I am poor as a means to implicitly say "Sure, sexism is a factor, but it's not the only factor, so quit pointing it out because it makes the guys uncomfortable."
That practice is exactly why so many women (people of color, etc) are so very angry. If people would simply acknowledge that my gender is actually something complicating my efforts to network and establish an adequate income and then spend time wondering what would work for me instead of dismissing it as "not the real reason" I'm poor, I would probably be okay financially.
I accept that gender could be a factor as well, but gender is not something that a comment on HN can change (or should for that matter). Your gender will not (probably) change and we can't really change the culture quickly either.
My point is that if you have low income, it would be better to focus on improving skills you are offering rather than try to solve "women are paid less" problem. For example, just presenting yourself as a website builder sounds more profitable than someone who edits resumes.
By the way is HN rank really that useful? For example I never knew there is a HN leader board or how to access it.
Thank you for the explanation, I wish you all the best.
I don't present myself on HN as "a website builder" because I do little plug and play websites (blogspot, wordpress) and I'm not really a programmer. My knowledge of how to build a useful website is potentially of value to people in the small town I live in where local talent is sorely lacking. It's not anything people on HN are likely to want to hire me for.
I'm amazingly, desperately tired of discussing this. Thank you for acknowledging my point. I don't really want to dig into things like the value of HN rank further. It doesn't do a helluva lot of good.
I bring it up to make the point that "If I am doing it wrong, show me the woman that is supposedly doing it right so I can take pointers from her." and that seems to not be what anyone ever hears.
I appear to be the highest ranked woman here, ergo I appear to be the woman who has most closely "mastered" successfully talking to the guys here and I remain frustrated as all hell and dirt poor. So there doesn't appear to be a good answer here.
I have more than 32k karma under this handle. I had like 25k karma under a previous handle. That handle appears to be the only openly female handle to have ever spent time on the HN leader board.
You're right, connections is everything and right now the business network is partitioned along the male-female line for reasons described above. It would be a monumental effort, if possible at all, to bridge this gap. Probably no less effort if I tried to blend in with english aristocracy.
However I believe you can climb the wealth ladder by leveraging your status. For example, you could start a one-person firm that builds or rebrands sites for clients and advertise your firm on linkedin. It'll go viral very quickly: people there will be retweeting your posts because your case fits the narrative.
Did you write about it in detail somewhere? I would like to read it if you had.
Also in my life professional and personal connections are not totally separated, as I view a person as a person. As an example helped my ex partners very significantly in their professional life (while they helped me in other ways).
I have written about it -- quite a lot over the years, in fact. I did so to manage the situation as best I could under difficult circumstances and those many posts have been pretty consistently redacted over the years.
I'm frankly really freaking tired of writing about it and don't really feel a strong desire to try to find some means to write about it as some kind of edutainment for random internet strangers, so don't hold your breath waiting for me to do a write up. That's probably not really in my best interest and I'm just amazingly exhausted with the whole thing at this point.
Sure, no problem, I understand. I often feel that both sexes have lots of their own problems and we won't ever be able to empatize with eachother however strongly we want to.
You should re-read the second sentence of what was actually typed. Maybe a few times. Your characterization is flagrantly opposite of what this person shared.
As usually, in western gynocentric social order, men are evil and the problem and women are like kids: should have all privileges and carry no responsibility.
Please don't take HN threads into gender flamewar hell. This sort of generic tangent is exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to post here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules, we'd be grateful.
Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of what ideology they're battling for or against, because it's destructive of what this site is supposed to be for. Curious conversation and ideological battle can't coexist any more than frisbee in a park can coexist with tank warfare. We're trying to optimize for curiosity here. Please use HN in the intended spirit from now on.
Can an intelligent conversation really happen like playing frisbee? Even court trials, where people want to get to the bottom of the truth, happen on the adversarial dialogue principle.
Also, most of the comments under this topic were ideological. The post itself is ideological. Ideological - where two competing ideas fight. Often ideological means moral in it's root. You don't like this? What is wrong with ideological conversations then?
I am the person who can analyse, think and articulate my conclusions, but, apparently, some positions and thoughts are not welcome here.
Apparently, everybody, you, corporations, government, society, my employer want me to be an empty headed craftsman who can talk only on technical topics and avoids social and political topics because it can be discussed by big boys only.
It's more like reverse sexism here. I totally get the behaviour here. You simply don't want to be on the receiving end of potential backlash when you're just trying to help someone. The calculus being you feel as if you might make a genuine remark only to receive a response interpreting said remark as the product of sexism e.g "out of persons A and B, I think B should run the company" where A is a woman and B is a man is simply far too likely to be met with "well of course a man would pick another man" than "it seems they carefully evaluated the attributes and qualities of A and B and B is likely better suited". The former response is itself sexist as it's basing assumptions about the decision on attributes of gender first and foremost, hence it's a sort of reverse sexism if you will. And the man's move here is sexist also in the regard that his calculus of the reverse sexism response is also based on the assumption that this dynamic exists and presents a real danger and it's all based primarily on gender too.
Sexism all the way down on both sides.
I've come to understand in life through experience there are a very thorny class of problems that I don't know of a proper name for, but have formulated my own concept of the "non-native speakers dilemma". It goes as follows:
You're on a bus and while listening to two strangers conversing you realise you can't quite understand what they're talking about. As a native speaker you feel perfectly confident that you know the language and you are simply missing context shared only by the individuals talking and hence it isn't possible for you to understand the conversation, and not because you don't know the language. If you are a non-native speaker, and depending on your level, you often start to doubt your abilities, and can never be fully sure if you simply don't understand because you're missing context that's not possible for you to obtain or there are gaps in your language skills that still need to be filled.
I had this realisation on the bus about a decade ago when learning Japanese. But I've often thought back to it in certain situations and these kind in particular seem to crop up a lot.
One example I overheard was a female engineer talking to another female non-engineer outside their workplace just about their experiences in their jobs. I heard the female engineer remark something along the lines of "the Architect often shoots down my ideas because I'm female".
I sat thinking to myself... That's interesting because the architect shoots down my ideas too (different workplace, so I don't _know_ her situation) but it's certainly not because I'm female, because I'm not female, but it's probably because I'm an intermediate level Dev with lots to learn and the idea has some flaws in it that he can see that I can't.
In this case I'm a "native speaker" so to speak, so I can be perfectly confident my thinking is accurate with respect to the reason why it's getting rejected. The female engineer is the so called "non-native speaker" where this pernicious dynamic exists making it nigh on impossible to confident that your assessment is accurate.
Curious if that metaphor makes sense to others, or if others ever noticed the same thing?
One example I overheard was a female engineer talking to another female non-engineer outside their workplace just about their experiences in their jobs. I heard the female engineer remark something along the lines of "the Architect often shoots down my ideas because I'm female".
I sat thinking to myself... That's interesting because the architect shoots down my ideas too (different workplace, so I don't _know_ her situation) but it's certainly not because I'm female, because I'm not female, but it's probably because I'm an intermediate level Dev with lots to learn and the idea has some flaws in it that he can see that I can't.
One of the really good things for me about hanging on HN is hearing "X happens to me too as a man because (reasons) and has nothing to do with gender." That's been enormously helpful to me in trying to find a path forward in my own life.
I hope you get constructive engagement of your points. I don't like the characterization that it's sexism on both sides but that's not intended to be a big attack or something. I think we don't have good language for talking about these issues that acknowledge in a non-blamey fashion that "Gender is, in fact, a factor in outcomes and it's complicated."
So far, we mostly do a sucky job of trying to discuss this at all. It ends up being people on both sides pointing fingers and even if you are bending over backwards to not point fingers, it will get interpreted as such by a lot of people and that tends to go bad places, not good.
Mmmmmm the problem I have found with feminist literature is that it often talks about the advantages of men and the disadvantages of women (which is all fair enough) but it doesn't really talk about the advantages of women and the disadvantages of men. To generalise, it doesn't attempt to critique its own model. I'm all for encouraging equality etc. and do my best to avoid identity politics discussions but at the back of my mind this is what I'm thinking when I over hear a woman/man complain about sexism. e.g. Are you really sure that this is true?
Yes things can be improved. But at some point will critical thinking and the benefit of the doubt be encouraged in society?
Or are we doomed to the media/twitter blowing up things out of proportion and people looking through prisms of victimhood.
Mmmmmm the problem I have found with feminist literature is that it often talks about the advantages of men and the disadvantages of women (which is all fair enough) but it doesn't really talk about the advantages of women and the disadvantages of men.
I don't self identify as a feminist. I never have. I generally agree with this criticism.
In contrast, it was first in expressly feminist academic literature that I first encountered the idea that men are disadvantaged in ways that are systemic and by design.
Here's a link to the website for The Red Pill, a documentary by a feminist who talked to men's rights activists. You may not agree with the subjects of the documentary, but the perspective is interesting, and was interesting to the feminist filmmaker who created it.
I guarantee whoever flagged me for recommending it did not watch it himself (yes, it was a dude)
It’s an evolving identity. If you think about what women have been mostly doing just in America, it’s been fighting to get legal voting rights, and then fighting to get out of the house and into the workplace, and then fighting to legally get rights for contraception and abortions, and then fighting gender discrimination and harassment (and this is just in the last 120 years). This is their identity at the moment, and I try to be patient with that fact.
If all you’ve been doing is fighting for your damn life as a group, then this will define your character until new types of challenges balance out your origins. This is true for a lot of groups that have consistent struggle. I cannot fault them for being combative.
A difficulty of being a minority of any stripe must be the not knowing.
Was the architect dismissive of my ideas because I am a woman? Because he shoots down everyone’s ideas? Because he has a specific problem with me? Because my ideas are bad?
One of the greatest challenges I had to overcome in my career was not reading too much into the actions of others. When you do you can easily be offended by everything.
A difficulty of being a minority of any stripe must be the not knowing.
It's incredibly hard to keep having an open mind, keep trying to figure out "Is this actually constructive criticism or toxic bullshit?" and keep trying to engage in good faith in the face of certain patterns. It's just exhausting. It takes all your time and mental and emotional energy to try to sort it out, which detracts from putting energy into things that will actually advance your career.
You can spend hours and hours wondering "What did he mean by that?" in an exchange that lasted under a minute. And you may never figure it out.
It's vastly easier to just start erring on the side of "You're all just sexist pigs!" Though, unfortunately, that seems to make the problem more intractable and unresolvable, but it makes is a little easier on a day-to-day basis to cope in the face of a situation that is inherently excessively hard to parse and navigate.
> It's vastly easier to just start erring on the side of "You're all just sexist pigs!"
So if we lived in a world were the concept of sexism was not as well developed as it is now, at least here in the US, you wouldn't have this internal conflict? Is this not enough reason to not engage in discussion and encourage others (presumably women) not to engage in behavior that keeps sexism at the very forefront of thought?
That maybe it's better not to pour salt on the wound by talking about sexism? Are you as engaged in the other top 30 stories on HN today or somehow this one is the one you needed to chime in on the most?
That maybe it's better not to pour salt on the wound by talking about sexism? Are you as engaged in the other top 30 stories on HN today or somehow this one is the one you needed to chime in on the most?
That's basically a personal attack.
I tend to get more attention and engagement for certain topics. If I am less engaged on other topics, that's partly because of "audience response," so to speak.
I am well aware of your karma points here and have been for years, I was not implying you go around gaslighting or anything of the sort. My point was about you and your wellbeing not others necessarily.
When you said above:
> "Is this actually constructive criticism or toxic bullshit?" and keep trying to engage in good faith in the face of certain patterns. It's just exhausting
I'm not sure why it's hard to get this rather simple point across, but what I'm trying to say is the fact that you engage in frequent discussion about sexism may have something to do with it being at the forefront of your thought and the source of your struggle in deciding if something is out of good faith criticism or "toxic bullshit".
You seem to be reading in a lot more hurt feelings on my part than I really have. I was doing a thing called "giving testimony." [1]
I talk about sexism because it comes up. I talk about sexism because it is pertinent to my life. I talk about sexism because I happen to be online and have nothing better to do because the thing my life revolves around is coping with my medical situation. [2]
I overall have a really positive opinion of HN which is why I spend so much time here. There seems to be no good way to express that and also state clearly "But I still need more income anyway, even though I don't hate everyone here."
Wherever you go, there you are.
I am likely the highest ranked woman here because literally starving and being homeless helped me heal when that isn't supposed to be possible. It's routinely drama to talk about my medical situation and I get called a liar to my face and told I'm crazy for talking about the fact that I'm getting healthier when that isn't supposed to be possible.
Hacker News is the only place on the internet where it is ever possible for me to have any kind of meaty, meaningful discussion of medical material and it has been a source of occasional one-off conversations with people with PhDs in Biology or what not who were kind enough to answer my questions in layman's terms, which has literally been lifesaving and life giving.
I don't hate HN. I do hate being desperately poor. It really sucks and I would like it to stop being a part of my life.
I'm at a point where I got the memo: Contrary to everything medical science seems to believe about my condition, semi-fasting is beneficial and will likely remain a part of my protocol for the rest of my life, even if I stop being poor. Though I only learned that because I was literally homeless and going hungry for part of most months for several years.
For most women, being homeless and going hungry would not be a literally life saving experience for them. It would be merely embittering.
So there is never any good way to talk about the fact that Hacker News literally has helped to save my life and also make the point "I would like to stop being poor." I don't want people to hear "She starved and that saved her life" and use that as some kind of bullshit justification for "Womenz should just be abused. It's better for them!"
I have very poor credibility when it comes to talking about my firsthand experience with getting healthier when the world claims that simply cannot be done. I'm in a no win situation in that regard.
Talking about sexism in the world is generally far less controversial than talking about the fact that I am getting well when that isn't supposed to be possible.
I love and adore HN. I loathe how fucking poor I am. I hate it with every fiber of my being and I would like to stop being poor and I am absolutely certain my gender is a factor in my intractable poverty.
I don't really care to engage further with you on this subject.
Yes I believe I remember you mentioning that you are poor several years ago, sorry to hear that hasn't changed even though you're the top female poster on HN, I believe patio11 landed a lucrative job at Stripe mainly because of his creds on HN?
I don't think you're alone in having nothing better to do in life than posting here, basically anyone posting here right now has nothing better to do in their life. We have a lot more in common that you might think. I'm not saying find something better to do than posting on HN, far from it, heck I'm doing it myself right now. What I am saying is perhaps find other topics to discuss if you want to rid yourself of the curse of being constantly "exhausted" from daily interaction with people (men) in deciding if they're all being "just sexist pigs!"
Coping with gendered stuff happening that helps keep one poor is exhausting whether you discuss it or not. It is even more exhausting to have to put on a happy face and pretend it isn't happening because it makes other people uncomfortable to hear that you are suffering and their behavior might somehow be a factor in that when they don't want to have to contemplate altering their own behavior in some way.
The original subject that bothered you was the fact you were having a hard time recognizing whether something is being sexist or not. To which I suggested a solution and you seem to be dismissing it, namely, that it might help to avoid topics that have a negative psychological effect.
> they don't want to have to contemplate altering their own behavior in some way
This is mutually exclusive from the discussion we are having so I rather not engage in this topic. My original point stands regardless of whether you think there is rampant sexism: the way to cope with it is perhaps to avoid or at least stop seeking discussions about that subject. Much like the people suffering from PTSD shouldn't be exposed to things that make them remember the events that caused their PTSD. I am not saying you have PTSD or even that the problem is in any way shape or form with you or women, I am saying avoiding the discussion of such topics may be the best game-theocratical way of improving one's wellbeing.
I will reiterate what I said previously: You seem to be reading in a lot more hurt feelings on my part than I really have.
Certainly, I have hurt feelings. Absolutely.
But it doesn't begin to approach anything remotely resembling PTSD.
I can confidently estimate that getting healthier has averted literally millions of dollars worth of medical costs for me and my sons. I just can't talk about that here all that much because people literally call me "crazy" and a "liar" to my face about that topic.
And talking about it also makes me worry that people will use that as an excuse to continue to dismiss my complaints that my gender has proven to be a barrier to networking here and establishing an adequate income. I would like to stop being poor and I never know how to give acknowledgement to HN and the people here for their role in the downright miraculous events of my life while staying the course on saying "My gender remains a barrier to establishing an adequate income and I would like to somehow have that issue resolved."
In Star Wars, everyone focuses on Luke saying "Noooooo!!!!!!" when Darth Vader tells him "I am your father." But the stronger statement of pain in that scene is the silence with which he chooses to fall to what should be his death rather than join his father. (He doesn't die because Leia shows up to miraculously rescue him, but he takes that plunge presumably expecting to die and the statement is "Join my father or die? Give me death, thanks.")
The "loud noise" I sometimes seem to make on HN concerning sexism is the lesser pain compared to issues over which I generally remain silent here.
The whole thing is enormously complicated and there is no good means for me to adequately explain it to you here on HN while maintaining my silence on subjects that I believe other people wouldn't want me to address here.
> You seem to be reading in a lot more hurt feelings on my part than I really have.
It's not about hurt feelings, as I mentioned above, it might be helpful not to focus on such discussions not because they can cause hurt feelings, but because they can actually make your life worse in your personal and professional relationships with men. If 80% of it is "toxic bullshit" you're still missing 20% of constructive criticism coming from men where others are not. We all hope to live in a world where that 20% is 21% but until then why not optimize for receiving constructive feedback by removing any psychological barriers?
I am sorry for your other issues that you cannot talk about here but I'm not sure how that's relevant to the topic. If it's sexism you're talking about, you asserting that you're staying silent on the issue in of itself is not evidence for there being sexism. I'm not sure how to continue this discussion.
I think I get as much engagement as I do at times on the topic of sexism because I'm pretty even-handed and reasonable. I believe that trying to educate people about how this works and doing so in a non-blamey fashion that doesn't act like "men are all simply assholes!" is one of the most effective things I can do to address the issue and I'm generally satisfied with how that seems to be going, though I certainly wish I had a magic wand and could make it disappear overnight instead of making slow, steady headway on the issue.
This isn't actually a conversation I want to be having. I've already said that once. I've chosen to engage with you because I don't think you are being a jerk. I think your desire to be helpful is sincere and your point of view is reasonable, given what you likely know about me and my relationship to HN.
What I'm trying to tell you is that your conclusions are ill informed through no fault of your own. There are things about which I am consistently silent on HN and that's a conscious and strategic choice and it grows out of circumstances that involve other people, not just me.
For that reason, I don't feel free to simply "explain it to you like you are five" as they say. Doing so would likely violate HN guidelines, violate the privacy of multiple other people and probably just make my problems worse, not better.
So my continued silence is in some sense something I feel compelled to maintain and not really something I feel in a position to choose otherwise about. If other people wish to break their silence for my benefit, that's on them and I have no control over that.
So far, other parties have consistently chosen to err on the side of continued silence (which sometimes feels to me like "covering their asses at my expense," but it's arguably a lot more complicated than that) and it's not something I can remedy by calling them out.
It's also not something I care to call them out on in public because the most pertinent parties have generally proven to be of better character than most of the world and there is nothing to be gained by besmirching their public reputation and giving people an easy scapegoat to focus on. The result would be that 5 million people who are more or less equally guilty of essentially sexist behavior would have a short list of people to pin it on and those people would be harmed without my problems actually being remedied.
"It sucks to be me" as they say. But it's also really, really complicated and has helped save my life -- literally.
I would be thrilled to pieces to discontinue this conversation. Continuing to allude to things I am normally silent on is potentially not in my best interest.
Have a good evening. Please don't be angry if I simply stop replying. It's really not a conversation I wish to continue and I'm very sympathetic to what you are trying to do here and why you likely see things the way you see them, but you simply aren't really in possession of the all facts and I am in no position to remedy that matter and enlighten you.
> I'm not pouring salt on any wounds to engage here. I go out of my way to not pour salt on wounds.
I'll just say that whenever I see you comment on posts on this topic, I pay attention. I tend to switch accounts every so often as well, so I have several years of doing so under my belt at this point.
I don't always agree with you, but I've learned a lot from your comments and am confident that you're making from from a place of open desire to share your perspective and learn of the perspectives of others.
Please don't stop because someone doesn't "get it" :)
That reminds me of when I was very young, when I felt treated unfairly I often thought a lot about what I might have done wrong to deserve that kind of treatment. Naturally, in time I also learnt that sometimes people just have a bad day or pent-up aggressions or are simply dicks, and to be wary of projecting too much meaning into these negative interactions.
I strongly agree that there’s a language dimension to this. We don’t have good enough language for lots of passion-invoking social debates. Sexism and racism come top of mind.
For example, an enormous amount of misunderstanding, bad communication and fraught decision making has resulted from the social activist redefinition of “racism” that has gained prominence in the last decade or so. And there are still so many people talking past each other completely obliviously. A richer taxonomy of terms and ideas could help everyone reach understanding.
It seems like the same dynamic as you’re describing in these dialogues on sexism.
For quite a few in this space, reaching an understanding is the opposite of their goal. Intentionally obtuse word meanings that shift constantly to match whatever one party wants them to match is a staple of these discussions. The last thing such people want is a richer vocabulary where everything is clearly defined. Understanding isn't the goal, getting their way is the goal.
Intentionally misunderstanding is a tool for accomplishing that goal.
It's been enormously helpful for me, in contrast, to have female colleagues, and watch the things they go through that I don't. It's easy to say "I accept that this is true because the statistics say it", and another to discuss that no, "X thing", literally never happens to me.
> One of the really good things for me about hanging on HN is hearing "X happens to me too as a man because (reasons) and has nothing to do with gender."
I was interested to note something in the hiring page for the company wiki where I worked once.
It said the biggest red flag, an automatic no-hire, was a candidate confidently "explaining" things he didn't actually know. This was a big enough problem to be called out in the hiring policy. Interviewers were on notice to watch out for candidates who claimed to know something, but whose explanations were pure bluffing. Happens all the time.
The feminist literature, of course, refers to this as "mansplaining", except that mansplaining by definition refers to an explanation delivered to a woman. How is it different from the ordinary behavior? Well, it isn't.
I don't think I ever accuse anyone of "mansplaining" because I don't think that's likely to be helpful in remedying the problem. But I do think the use case that men can be oblivious to the stuff women are dealing with and can kind of pick on women and can then act like she's just not trying hard enough or something if she doesn't jump on his suggestion as a brilliant solution is a common enough occurrence that it isn't unreasonable for there to be a word specifically for that pattern.
It's a word useful to kvetch to allies about it happening. It's not a word useful to build bridges, explain to the people doing it why their random unsolicited advice to a woman can be actively harmful, etc.
Edit: And I am not trying to pick a fight with you or something. I do realize the context here is you are probably agreeing with me in some fashion. (Turns out I'm still not perfect and I apologize if this reads as fighty. It's not intended to be.)
One of the toughest things about discrimination is being able to prove it. I'm a white man, but I spent time living in Japan where I was an obvious minority.
Some situations were clear to me that I was being treated a particular way because of my race. But then others were not so clear cut.
For example, one time I was talking in Japanese with a group and someone kept repeating what I said like "He said...". I was getting angry at that as I took it to mean that they were basically "translating" my Japanese for others. But then later, I was watching a Japanese TV drama and the same thing happened on there (with only Japanese speaking). That made me think that maybe this was just a cultural thing that people do and didn't have any reflection on me personally.
Having mentored a female engineer, I've seen that if you are constantly on the lookout for signs of discrimination against you, you will find so much of it. You'll go crazy thinking the whole world is out to get you because of your sex, race, etc. It's tough because there are no doubt situations where that does happen. But there are also situations where a white man would have been given the same feedback or treated in the same way. As a minority though, you only have your own experience to go on. It becomes tough to recognize what is legitimate discrimination vs what is just ordinarily communication.
I have this issue with my SO where I'll sigh heavily and she'll interpret it as me disapproving of whatever she just did or did not do, inventing scenarios in case there's no immediately obvious cause.
Instead my head is somewhere else entirely, and I might have been annoyed at myself for forgetting to pick something up at the store or whatever.
We've gotten better at handling it, I try to remind myself to immediately tell her it wasn't her, and she asking me what it was if I forget. But there has been a lot of unnecessary bad times that originated from such episodes...
I was watching a Dog Whisperer episode where this couple had a violent pitbull. It turned out the two people (mostly the girl) just wanted out of the relationship and deferred the conflict onto the dog as the conduit of the problem.
This is not uncommon for men or woman to do, and more commonly expressed as ‘you are looking for things to point out’.
You can run your own little test. Convert the sigh to something similar like shrugging. Consider it debugging with console.logs until you find out the source of the bug.
There's a real epistemological problem that people of protected classes face that I hadn't considered before reading this article and the comments here; one unintended effect of the current zeitgeist is that, because overt sexism against women is so heavily policed, almost nobody is going to be explicitly sexist against women, so women can get stuck questioning the motives behind potentially any interaction.
For those perceived as belonging to a privileged class, people feel free to (and in some cases relish in and are socially rewarded for) voicing their sexist opinions. A man has a lot less reason to dwell on whether a particular interaction was sexist against them, because when it does happen it is often overt.
We already have a term for it: victim blaming. Just because someone is using a valid issue (sexism) doesn't mean they aren't using it as a weapon. When the victim acts in a more cautious manner that's perfectly reasonable. To call them out on that (non-imaginary) fear is victim blaming. The abuser in this case is someone with a personality disorder or some other mental health problem that means they will use any tools at their disposal to manipulate or control another person. It's not sexism, it's prudence. One would use the same prudence against men who used something to manipulate or control them. It would look different, but it would be the same thing.
Yes, but it was called a "decacorn" because it was valued at $10 billion dollars and its valuation dropped overnight to zero when it was outed as a fraud.
I posit that it wouldn't have gotten so crazy overvalued if it hadn't been headed by a pretty young woman. But trying to explain that is probably "off topic" and just thinking about trying to explain it makes me tired. I'd rather not.
I didn't pay too close attention to the story. If they had managed to produce the tech they claimed for the price they claimed, would $10 billion be crazy overvalued?
The issue is this: Would a man have gotten a $10 billion valuation based on hot air and zero results for years and years? Or would someone have called him on his shit a lot earlier?
She was literally sleeping with and living with a much older male investor* while publicly claiming to be celibate in her twenties due to her extreme devotion to her career and business. I always figured that was bullshit and she was probably sleeping with someone and "I'm celibate" was probably a cover story.
And no one went looking for that because of fear of being called sexist, I guess. I hesitated to give that opinion on HN for fear of back lash.
But as a woman with six year of college and yadda, when I meet accomplished men in positions to open doors for me, a lot of them find me attractive and this actively closes doors in my face. I'm not willing to sleep with a man to open doors, not because I have some kind of moral objection to that but because I don't believe it actually works.
It didn't actually work for Elizabeth Holmes. Sleeping with an investor did not, in fact, help her succeed in the world of business. It merely helped her cover up fraud while her problems grew larger until it resulted in both criminal and civil suits and her name is mud. She will never really recover from this debacle.
So I don't think sleeping with men to open doors works. I think sleeping with rich and powerful men would get me sex and maybe would let me be a "kept woman" but it wouldn't get me taken seriously as a business woman and it wouldn't teach me how business is done and it wouldn't have some men giving me meaty, constructive feedback.
* Edit: To be crystal clear here, I mean someone who invested in Theranos, I don't mean "Someone whose job title was investor." This was a clear conflict of interest.
> But as a woman with six year of college and yadda, when I meet accomplished men in positions to open doors for me, a lot of them find me attractive and this actively closes doors in my face. I'm not willing to sleep with a man to open doors, not because I have some kind of moral objection to that but because I don't believe it actually works.
I thought this was interesting. Do you mean "it closes doors because they are only prepared to help you if you sleep with them"? Or "it closes doors because they're scared to help you in case you misinterpret it"?
It closes doors because there is no good way for them to proceed. We essentially have no good answers for how to get involved with a woman both professionally and romantically in some ethical, above board fashion.
So men who are attracted to me are damned if they do, damned if they don't.
And I can't trust their motives. Are they helping me because they think I'm smart and talented and a good fit for a project? Or are they helping me hoping it leads to sex?
In practice, they usually don't make any effort to help me professionally anyway. Once they decide I'm attractive, in their minds the relationship is strictly personal and not professional. Period.
My experience has been men consistently decide early whether this is a platonic/professional relationship or a potential romantic interest. If I'm a potential romantic interest, I'm basically dead to them professionally.
They also tend to only think about how this impacts their career, not mine.
When I had a corporate job, one senior programmer in the IT department asked me for a date. In five years working there, he was the only person I met who knew what GIS was without me having to explain it. (I have a certificate in GIS.)
He interpreted that as "We have things in common and she's hot." He did not wonder if I might be an asset to the IT department. He did not wonder if I wanted a job in the IT department.
I did, in fact, want a job in the IT department. Being asked out by him did nothing to hurt his career. He was doing nothing wrong.
I'm sure he stopped to consider that. I'm sure he stopped to check that asking me out was not a fire-able offense.
He likely did not wonder how it impacted my career at the company. It made it vastly less likely I would ever get a job in his department.
This was true whether I said "yes" or "no." Simply being asked for a date, regardless of how that went personally, made it vastly less likely I would ever get into the IT department.
I left the company a few weeks later. I likely would have left anyway and had been planning to do so for some time, but him asking me for a date was something of a final nail in the coffin, killing all hope that I had a shot at a real future at the company.
I didn't. That simply was a non starter.
So it made it easier to pull the trigger on plans to leave.
>This was true whether I said "yes" or "no." Simply being asked for a date, regardless of how that went personally, made it vastly less likely I would ever get into the IT department.
Speaking from outside the tech bubble, that sounds nuts - I mean the situation, not your interpretation of it. How can being asked on a date mean you can't work in the asker's department?
I didn't say I couldn't. I said it made it vastly less likely.
It was a big company. You could date and marry coworkers but you couldn't date someone in your chain of command.
I didn't know the internal structure of the IT department, but if he was high enough in the chain of command, there would be many positions below him. I had an entry level job. Transferring from an entry level job in a different department would have meant I would be getting an entry level job in IT.
I was having trouble figuring out how to get a different job in the company as is. I was having trouble finding the kind of info I wanted that was pertinent to me and having trouble understanding the internal job listings.
Adding the possibility that someone had just asked me out who was high enough in the department I wanted to get into that many of the jobs that might interest me would make him my boss made it overwhelmingly difficult to try to navigate the process of transferring into IT.
As I said, I already had plans to leave for unrelated reasons. Had I stayed, maybe I would have eventually drawn different conclusions and found a path forward.
But based on the info I had, my emotional reaction was "Welp, I can stop fretting about whether or not I'm doing the right thing by leaving. I'm basically going nowhere fast at this company."
I don't know. There are crazy snakeoil hypes without "pretty young woman" being a founder. Even if it did contribute to the hype the it probably wasn't insignificant
compared to rest of the factors
It should be noted that past the early stages virtually none of that investment and valuation came from institutional VCs and people who had a clue. The valuation was driven by rich people who didn’t know any better and they sadly got defrauded.
And mod enablement on every platform, including HN from which I've been banned permanently for calling her a fraud.
But hey, I'm a sexist, racist homophobe who wanted to bring down a woman. Why should anyone want to listen to me when I told them she is a fraud whose only credentials are her genitals?
Its treating people different based on gender. It depends very much on semantics whether you call that sexism. It is certainly not the form of sexism that people these days are most worried about.
That would be discrimination based on sex, but no it would not be sexist in this case. Now if, for example, he treated people based on gender because he felt women belong in the kitchen, then that would be both sexist and discriminatory.
The words sexism/racism often get confused with discrimination.
The problem is how politically charged the word 'sexist' is. I'm aware that the boring unemotional dictionary definition is treating someone differently on the basis of gender, but in reality if a guy is hanging out in a women's toilet its not generally seen as sexist/sexism to ask him to leave (even though this is discrimination on the basis of sex).
So labelling anything where two genders are treated differently as 'sexism' or 'sexist' I don't think actually matches the modern usage of the word. I think the difference is it's usually used in a negative connotation and the type of discrimination is seen as non-acceptable - for instance most people wouldn't call a girl-band or boy-band sexist because they select their members based on gender, while most would call an employer sexist if they had a generic business and tried to segregate their teams into single-gender teams. Most people still don't have a problem with boy bands (i.e. a male-only-team in a music workplace), thus not sexist, but do have a problem with male-only-teams in other workplaces, thus sexist.
> if a guy is hanging out in a women's toilet its not generally seen as sexist/sexism to ask him to leave (even though this is discrimination on the basis of sex)
Enforcing a rule isn’t discrimination. The rule itself may or may not be discrimination.
> Most people still don't have a problem with boy bands (i.e. a male-only-team in a music workplace), thus not sexist, but do have a problem with male-only-teams in other workplaces, thus sexist.
They get the label “boy band” after they form. If they were a mixed gender group (like a workplace) and kicked out a talented female musician because they wanted to be male-only, that would be sexist.
I don’t remember seeing rules in the dictionary definition, and I also struggle to believe that something can’t be sexist/sexism if the laws allow it. I think in the western world we would say that another country banning women from driving would be an example of sexism, albeit within the laws of the country.
Also, I hate to break the illusion for you, but boy bands are often planned as such and are manufactured by the record labels. It’s not a coincidence, for example, that the spice girls are all girls - that’s because they only auditioned girls because they were making the spice girls.
There's no confusion, just a difference in upbringing. I was raised being told that racism was discrimination due to race and sexism was discrimination due to sex. I was told that our goal should be to be blind to such attributes in a professional setting. There were many in my age group that were raised the same.
> I was told that our goal should be to be blind to such attributes
The woke reactions would be like: It’s really saying, "I don’t really see what makes you you". We want you to see the benefit of the diversity people bring to the table. Being colour-blind used to be woke, now it's whitewashing.
My comment: apparently they need the attributes to define the identity they rally around. You can't not see them anymore because it is interpreted as ignoring their identity.
I see this move towards redefining sexism and racism to be the prevalent form of negative sex or race based discrimination, instead of all forms of discrimination.
That's why I stated it is a semantic discussion.
On the one hand, I think this redefining is good. Because when we talk about the problems of racism and sexism, the prevalent form of negative discrimination (so in the west, racism by white people, and sexism by males) are what we tend to mean.
On the other hand, other forms of discrimination also happen, and we need words to describe them. Racism and sexism used to describe that, but by now such describing tends to feel bad. It tends to feel like drawing an equivalence between e.g. a white person not being able to use the N-word being 'just as bad' as the oppression faced by black people in America.
I feel we need separate words for both the systemic (non intentional) oppression of people by sex and gender. And discrimination based on sex and gender in general. Originally racism and sexism used to describe the latter. Slowly we are moving towards having it mean the former, without having new words for the latter. Ideally wish we had just come up with new words for the latter. But that would have lost some of the power that comes from calling someone a racist or a sexist.
> a white person not being able to use the N-word being
If that is what comes to mind when people talk about white discrimination, then there is a large disconnect in the discussion when talking about the semantic meaning of sexism and racism.
If two people apply to a university and the critical distinction why one got excluded is race, then that is a negative discrimination. If two people are accused of identifical crime and the the critical distinction why one got a harsher sentence is race, then that is negative discrimination. If two people are illegally demonstrating on the street and one get violently assaulted for doing so, and the critical distinction is race, then that is negative discrimination.
Some of that negative discrimination harms white people, some black people, some both in different circumstances, and there is many more situation where such discrimination occurs. Same in regard to gender.
It isn't directly treating people different based on gender.
It is treating people differently based on the damage that they can do to you. Generally a woman accusing you of being sexist is will do more damage than a man doing the same (not universally, but usually). So while the outcome is equivalent the decision is based on the very real threat, not the gender.
The men are assuming based on the female founder’s gender _alone_ that she might accuse him of sexism.
Regardless of how rational this fear is, they are stereotyping new female founders they’re meeting for the first time based on what an X% of other female founder’s have done in the past.
For the men, it’s probably a risk/reward calculation. Keep your head down and be polite and have ~0% chance of being accused of sexism. Or, speak up and maybe ruffle some feathers and have a ~X% chance of being accused of sexism.
You can see the problem on both sides of the equation, but withholding advice based on gender alone does meet the definition of sexism, regardless of the intentions of self-protection rather than hate.
I don't know the solution to this problem, but I do think that turning it into a Morton's fork ("men are sexist regardless of whether they speak or not") is not it.
Instead of playing semantics by saying that "it is technically sexism" (and I'm not saying I agree with whether it actually is or not), we could choose to at least stop phrasing the situation like that.
You’re not sexist if you give honest feedback to both genders. But you are at risk of being falsely labeled sexist if you do. It’s a bad situation I agree, but we won’t fix it by giving into the fear of being labeled.
> we won’t fix it by giving into the fear of being labeled.
But we can't fix it by doing otherwise—asking people to stop being "overly" cautious—either. Another comment put it best: that solution is akin to asking people to self-sacrifice, except that at the very least jumping on a grenade gets you a medal; in this case, it gets you vilification.
It’s really not though. People can spread any rumors they want. Giving blunt advice or not funding a company or whatever other perceived slight still exposes you. The risk is still there from the first contact to the last.
But in any legal setting this will get shut down immediately unless there’s valid proof.
What I mean is that if you’re operating out of fear, you’re doing it wrong.
The only way rumors kill careers is if we fear the rumors.
If everyone is giving honest, straightforward feedback, then everyone has a rumor about them and it becomes powerless.
But if most people are afraid and one person gives honest feedback and is subjected to a rumor, the one rumor seems significant.
I guess I brought up the legal stuff because I think believing rumors is silly in general. If you’re actually the subject of discrimination, you should prove it in court for the benefit of yourself and society.
I’m not sure that we’re disagreeing entirely. I do agree with what you’re saying as well. Just hoping we can chart a new path.
> If everyone is giving honest, straightforward feedback, then everyone has a rumor about them and it becomes powerless.
But this leads me back to my previous comment: this isn't a feasible solution because it means basically asking people to self-sacrifice until the "rumors" lose power.
Yes, that’s how every successful resistance to oppression in history has operated.
Self-preservation and self-interest is how every single resistance has failed and capitulated.
And if you’re actually kind, fair and decent to women you will have people who rebut the rumors. A tweet against you isn’t an inevitable destruction of your career.
> if you’re actually kind, fair and decent to women [...] A tweet against you isn’t an inevitable destruction of your career.
I think we're never going to reach an agreement so I'm cutting out.
The last thing I'll say is that there's a difference between this particular situation and historical resistances to oppression: If you were to even call this situation "oppression", it would only lead to further ridicule and ostracism, perhaps would even get most of the few people who might have sided with you to turn on you as well.
Like I said earlier; jumping on a grenade gets you a medal, the people who protested during rights movements are heroes. The ones you're calling now to self-sacrifice would very likely be considered "some more toxic males who finally got their just desserts".
Of course, I hope I'm wrong. In fact, I hope a better solution is found.
The day a good, decent, respectful man giving a woman honest feedback is considered by the majority to be “some toxic male getting their just desserts”, we’ve gone way, way beyond where we are now. That destination is only possible if we capitulate to a loud minority making unfair accusations.
It is irrelevant that the majority does not actually think this way.
What is relevant is if there is a vocal minority who has power over you and your career that does. And any of the majority who steps out of line in opposition to this power structure individually gets destroyed.
You seem to be mistaking your desire for fair and righteous social dynamics for what actually is today: a Kafkaesque environment perpetuated by fear of anyone speaking up and then becoming a target for the mob and ruination.
Maybe you don't believe this, or maybe this isn't your experience, but take it from many of hundreds of commenters here, this article, or countless stories just like it that this is very real and justified fear.
> That destination is only possible if we capitulate to a loud minority making unfair accusations
This is quite literally exactly what has been happening, and it seem like it will continue happening because the loud minority has everyone else by the balls.
> Yes, that’s how every successful resistance to oppression in history has operated.
I think the difference for this particular case is that the people who have to stick their necks out are the people who generally don't have much to lose if the resistance fails. (Obviously this isn't the case for the larger discussion around combating sexism, where individual women bear the brunt of the risk, but for this particular advice-giving bit, it is.)
And if you’re actually kind, fair and decent to women you will have people who rebut the rumors.
This is very naïve. For this to work, either people would have to be omniscient, or some karmic mechanism is ensuring that "justice always prevails." Let me assure you that neither is the case. I know this, because being different and being a minority, in various times and places, was enough pretext to let people attach falsehoods to you, and have it widely believed. We know this from false accusations in the Jim Crow US south. I know such things from my personal experience.
However, those mechanisms aren't the only ones. No-one is completely immune from such accusations, except for fleeting periods of extreme popularity and societal goodwill. A lie will get seven times around the world, before the truth laces its boots. This, too, I know from personal experience.
The question is this: Do we want mob mentality to be the arbiter of justice? Nearly a millennium of jurisprudence would firmly tell us: NO!
What's more, the mob mentality is clearly sexist! And it's the mob's sexism which is the root of the problem. On average, isn't there a much stronger mob reaction from a woman's accusation of sexism over a man's? It's this difference that gender-skews the cost/benefit calculation. This difference is itself sexist.
Justice doesn't come reliably from the mob. Instead, what we get is bias that results in more sexism. Funny that.
Outrage mobs don't need a legal setting to ruin someone's life (or livelihood).
Question: Would we, on average, expect an outrage mob response of the same size and magnitude when a man makes such an accusation? Whether or not this is justified by historical injustice is irrelevant here. What's salient is whether or not there is a gender skew.
If there is such a systematic and large societal gender skew, then we should expect people's cost/benefit calculations regarding the exposure to the risk of such accusations to also be skewed in a way that is large, systemic, and gender unequal. In a word, the way our society works around accusations, current day in 2021, is itself highly sexist.
Therefore, if we don't want systematized sexism, then we have to eliminate gendered skew in these cost/benefit calculations. We already know the mechanisms for the way out of this. It's codified in various legal systems, and in the values of historical liberal societies and philosophies. They are called respect for evidence, innocent until proven guilty, and due process. When society applies these principles gender neutrally, the gendered skew in individual cost/benefit calculations will even out, on average. Society will have eliminated another form of sexism, and the world will be a better place.
When one says "believe women" somehow in preference to believing men, this is a contributing factor. To avoid the gendered skew, it would be obviously impractical to say, "believe everyone." Hence: respect for evidence, innocent until proven guilty, and due process. Applied gender-neutrally, this is our way out.
In short, the tremendous power we've given mobs based on accusations not-requiring evidence is itself highly sexist, and this distorts our society to also be more sexist.
You don't need to violate a law to have your career and reputation destroyed. In today's at will employment environment its just easier for a company to lay off the accused rather than endure the cost and damage to its reputation incurred from keeping someone accused of sexism, racism or any of the isms. That person does not even have had to have done anything wrong, the accusation is enough to torpedo them.
It's not reasonable to expect the change to come from people without power. The stakes are too high for most and there is very little to win.
You would need someone like Google CEO (with the support of the board) to say: jumping to accusations will get you in trouble. Just because it's criticism doesn't make it sexist. We don't care about your social power pseudo scientific theory and we will not settle in court. Stop making the work place toxic.
Then you need to have this sentiment repeated by other powerful people.
Chances of that happening in US in coming years? In my opinion about zero.
Based on your original post, I guess you could say that if you give honest feedback to men but not to women, you could also be labeled sexist. But the chances of anyone finding out that's what you're doing is pretty low, perhaps lower than getting labeled sexist for giving honest feedback to everyone.
I feel like "giving into the fear of being labeled" doesn't fully capture the risk involved. For many people that labeling means the end of their career, or at the very least a lot of personal and professional embarrassment, plus a big negative mark on their record. I have a hard time looking down on anyone too hard for giving in to that fear.
In a culture where there are huge negative consequences for being labeled a $BAD_PERSON on twitter, people are obviously going to be more careful with everything they say. To expect them to behave differently is nonsense. You can't expect everyone to want to risk their careers and face painful, public, humiliating backlash for your own benefit. It's normal and healthy for people to want to protect themselves, in the same way that it's normal not to immediately trust strangers.
The real problem is the cancel culture. That's what needs to be fixed. A twitter mob shouldn't be able to cause as much damage as they do. There should be laws preventing people from being fired because of social media. Maybe everyone who's ever been fired or had negative career consequences due to a twitter mob should get together and bring on a massive class-action lawsuit. Force twitter to fix their toxic lynch mob problem, and let that be an example for any other social media company that wants to capitalize on harmful gossip and mob behavior.
No, the real real problem is that in while there is some behavior that is obviously $BAD and others that are obviously not $BAD, there's a large range of behavior for which it's difficult to tell whether it's $BAD or not.
Consider the criminal justice system. Some people are obviously guilty and others are obviously innocent. But in between, there are lots of situations where it's difficult to tell whether the person is guilty or not. Vow to be more "tough on crime", and innocent people spend years in jail (or worse, end up executed). Vow to protect the innocent, and lots of guilty people get away scot-free. And there are criminals who are very good at exploiting this uncertainty.
There was a very insightful essay I saw many years ago which I can't find now unfortunately; but the main point was this: In superhero comic books and movies, the real superpower is certainty. The good guys always know who the bad guys are; it's just a matter of defeating them. In the real world, we have plenty of power to defeat the bad guys; it's just not always clear who the bad guys are.
So take the example from TFA, where the investor thought male founder A would be a better CEO than female founder B. Implicit bias is a real thing, and has been proven in dozens of studies. (For instance, where people are asked to rate the qualifications of a range of CVs, where the gender of the name on the resume is randomized.) Does the investor think A is better than B because of implicit (or not-so-implicit) bias? Or is A genuinely a better fit than B? It's basically impossible to know; even the investor themself may not know.
In the past, things swung very heavily toward "let the guilty go free", which meant implicit bias was allowed to stand unchallenged (leading to more men in leadership, leading to more implicit bias). "Cancel culture" is an attempt to swing things the other way. But it falls victim to the "certainty superpower" delusion: they think they know who the actual bad guys are, and end up taking down innocent people in the process.
What's the solution? In some sense there is no solution: until we have an Oracle of All Truth which we can consult, we will always have uncertainty; which means either punishing the innocent, letting the guilty go free, or some mixture of both. The best thing we can do is honestly acknowledge the situation and try to balance things as best we can.
> So take the example from TFA, where the investor thought male founder A would be a better CEO than female founder B. Implicit bias is a real thing, and has been proven in dozens of studies.
Incredible.
In TFA, this precise same individual did the reverse first. It is hard to argue bias, when someone worked to get a better founder, female, to be CEO...
Yet this is dropped, ignored, in your comment.
So here we see, that even those actively showing non-bias, are labelled as likely biased still?!
If people's prior actions are no longer any remote indication of bias or not, all is lost.
Two examples of his actions with different genders do not show that there is absence or presence of a gender-specific bias.
Decision maker still could have bias towards men or women generally, but in those two cases some other factors could outweigh this bias, even if it actually was present. No way to tell.
The article also mentions this topic, by listing some factors that may influence decision in such situation:
> The degree to which men hold back on their advice depends on 1) how much is at stake and 2) how much they trust you. For example, you’ll be much more likely to get candid advice from an investor who has invested a lot of money in your company and you’ve known for years vs. a panelist at a tech conference giving feedback onstage who doesn’t know you and hasn’t invested in your startup.
I'm talking about how we as normal people, and the public, respond when we see something like that situation. Suppose the investor had asked the woman to step down in favor of the man. Almost nobody who saw that situation -- not the woman, not the man, not the other people in the company, probably not the other investors, and almost certainly not the general public -- are going to know about the other situation.
> Answer: because the bias is, that all men are biased.
So, in a discussion where we're discussing the possibility that women might see anti-woman bias where none exists, we have a situation where a man sees anti-man bias where none exists.
You've provided additional info here, which has helped me get what you meant. I'm not even saying you weren't clear before, just that personally, I now see what you mean with more clarity.
"even the investor themself may not know"
The above fragment is what really 'got to me'. I agree that some people may have an unconscious bias. Yet from a few studies, showing some have this bias?
I hear this now spoken of as gospel. As if the very fiber of the male being, is to have this bias. So to this:
"a man sees anti-man bias where none exists."
I say -- I don't think so. Because this 'unconscious bias' theory is a bias in itself. It's like claiming all women have victim mentality, or all women are 'queen bees'. It just isn't so.
It clearly does. You seem to indicate that a male is “guilty” of gender-specific bias no matter what he does. So a non-murdering male is still a murderer because he is a male?
We won't fix it, but demanding to fix it from the people who stand to lose the most and has the least means to fix it might be not the best way to approach it either. Maybe if we became a little more attentive to the potential of false accusations and less tolerant to people who falsely accuse others of sexism, the balance could start moving back to where people wouldn't be afraid to talk candidly just because they talk to a female.
> we won’t fix it by giving into the fear of being labeled
Individuals will consider their jobs and thus their dependents' welfare more important than risking being publicly slaughtered to fix a mindset that's pretty ingrained now.
There isn’t reason to assume the increased perceived risk is do to a pre-judgement of increased bad behavior of the “opposing” party. It could be just calculating a different risk based off your own increased vulnerability to any bad behavior.
You can accuse people of anything. I think maybe what you’re saying is that a man accusing another man of being sexist against men would be far less believable.
Regardless, we’re talking about social judgements. In a legal setting the burden of proof would be on the accuser.
The legal setting doesn't matter. In these cases the damage is done reputationally, in the court of public opinion, well before any legal matters come into play.
And like many legal outcomes, just being accused is its own stigma. Someone accused of murder but then later (let's say objectively, truthfully, correctly) found not guilty will expect to face social discrimination and alienation. It's not right, but it's unfortunately how people operate.
I just want to say that all the light greyed out comments match my upbringing and worldview as well
Without an explanation about which parts people find disagreeable, assuming thats how people are even using the voting system here, I have no idea what the real world consensus is or what they wish for it to be
This comment is an incredible thing to use as an example.
You made this comment hours and hours ago. Yet in that time, 'what is grey' has changed. Things have been voted up and down. And who's to say that 5 years from now, 10 years, the 'web theme' of this site won't change.
And then grey means something else.
Now what you've said has changed, due to how the 'culture' on this site has changed.
Meanwhile, there have been people examining comments, and actions, people made even decades ago. Comments and actions taken out of context, single sentences quoted out of paragraphs from emails/etc, and then social media destroys them without care.
Not only must people now 'clam up' against current threat, but all potential future threat. A comment well received by a friend, can 20 years later be taken out of context, that context being historical, cultural, and personal.
And on top of all of that, a friend can become an enemy 20 years later, for entirely non-sexist, just normal person-to-person reasons. People can and do change over time, sometimes not for the better.
So:
* fear what you say now
* fear the future, for people will misquote 20 years later
* fear even female friends, for some may change over
decades, and destroy you later
I don't think this is here now. But if the perception of what is happening continues much longer, it may.
Heck, I recall reading an article which coached men to "never be alone with a woman", for "she could claim anything later". This thought process makes it highly difficult to even give advice in private!
This isn't exceptional or even new, it's been solid advice for anyone in a position of public visibility for at least the past thirty years. The same goes for being alone with teenagers: It doesn't take that much effort to have witnesses and keep the door open, especially considering what a volatile other party will do to your life if you don't.
The nuclear option between men is basically a physical fight. The nuclear option for women in any circumstance can be a serious character attack on a man. The explosive is completely weaponized and can be deployed in a variety of ways (air/land/sea, or in this case sexual harassment, workplace harassment, reputation destruction in your peer sphere at school, work, etc). It’s an extremely tactical option that is readily available.
All it takes it is for a girl to even utter ‘that guy is kind of creepy’, and boom, people will extrapolate from something as simple as that.
People's reputations and careers can be destroyed by a simple accusation of discrimination made on social media, let alone by an accusation levied by a founder against one of their investors.
If the accused also have a powerful position at a company, then that company also faces large liabilities, both reputational and financial. Everyone knows that the costs of litigation in the US are astronomical.
It is less known but equally true that the costs of arbitration (and to a lesser extent, mediation) can be high. Prohibitive for a startup, still painful for a larger company. Which means that all a potential accuser needs to do to get their pound of flesh is threaten litigation, and name an amount less than what would be paid in arbitration.
So our current system, on social media and in the courts, puts a tremendous amount of power in the hands of those who might accuse. And yes, the gender _alone_, or protected minority status _alone_, is enough to set off alarm bells in an executive who has already been burned.
The men are assuming based on the female founder’s gender _alone_ that she might accuse him of sexism.
Not necessarily. In a social situation, you may be more afraid of what other people will think than of what that one person will think.
If that one person misreads you and hates you, it's not some big career-ending problem. It only becomes a big career-ending problem when a whole lot of other people agree that you doing X is some major issue that "obviously" was rooted in some kind of nefarious intent, such as sexism.
> If that one person misreads you and hates you, it's not some big career-ending problem.
The problem is that the story will usually be told by the person who misunderstood the argument, and the other side's defense wouldn't have as much reach. "X is a sexist jerk" will gain way more clicks, attention and support than "I thought X was a sexist jerk but actually I misunderstood and we're all good - nothing to see here".
Furthermore nowadays there are plenty of people out there who love the drama and will be more than happy to keep pouring fuel into the fire, either for entertainment or in an attempt to virtue-signal how "better" they are by (appearing to) care about the issue. Worse, entire industries (social media) happily profit off this and encourage it by promoting the divisive content.
> It only becomes a big career-ending problem when a whole lot of other people agree
generally agree but have seen plenty cases on social media where the barrier to that agreement was incredibly low. I've even watched myself at times backing the wrong side -out of solidarity[1]- simply because I followed that person already for years and agreed to most of their other opinions.
[1] and what monster would not "always believe the victim"? As a proud father of a gorgeous and smart daughter I have an almost automatic response to see women's rights as something I need to protect. I'd always be harsher on my won sex when it comes to blame or "whodunit" (I'm aware of it so I'm able to counter it but no doubt that this pattern is always present like some muscle memory)
It's not just only stereotyping, it's just that there's real possibility. That would never happen with men. Women have the power to label you sexist, men don't.
No, men are (correctly, IMO), assessing the general public's level of sexism.
Even if the gender of the accuser has no effect on the probability of the person accusing someone of sexism, it has a massive effect on the probability that such accusations are believed and weaponised by the public / mainstream media.
The men are assuming based on the female founder’s gender _alone_ that she might accuse him of sexism.
Are they, necessarily? This could be entirely up to expected value and cost/benefit. Right now, current day, on average, the amount of power and attention wielded by a woman making an accusation of sexism is far larger than that which would be wielded by a man. This gender skew in outcome causes the cost/benefit calculations made by advice givers to also be gender-skewed. As a result, women get one cost/benefit calc, and men get another.
The problem is precisely systemic societal inequality and sexism. It's sexist to automatically value the word of one gender over that of another. However that is essentially what our society does in this context, made worse through social media's amplification of the mob mentality. It's this amplified societal gender skew which is the problem.
The way out of this is to value and respect evidence. The way out of this is due process and the concept of innocent until proven guilty. The way out is through principles which we know can counteract the evils and dysfunction of the mob, which we have known and codified, and whose value has been borne out by history, since nearly a millennium ago. Only this time, let's apply these gender neutrally.
Okay. Let me draw an analogy. Say you're in occupied Hungary circa 1956. Whenever you hear anybody walk by speaking Russian, you clam up for fear that they might be Soviet secret police.
Would you describe this person as "racist" against Russians? I don't think a reasonable person would apply that label. I think they'd say they're responding rationally to the specific circumstances of their immediate situation. That sort of behavior shows no inherent animosity to Russian people in general.
(And before anyone cries foul, I'm not in anyway saying sexism accusations in 2021 corporate America is anywhere near the same as the KGB. I think that should be patently obvious. The reason I picked this specific example was to stretch the underlying logic to a situation that's clear enough to be cut and dry situation.)
> Would you describe this person as "racist" against Russians?
Yeah, they're making decisions and treating someone differently based on the person's (anticipated) race. Something being rational doesn't make it not racism.
> That sort of behavior shows no inherent animosity to Russian people in general.
Racism has nothing to do with animosity. Consider that men have the opposite of animosity towards women and yet sexism is something between humans.
> Something being rational doesn't make it not racism.
That's the really tricky part with racism, not the mindless extremism. What is the acceptable limit between rationalism and racism? Is there one? If we take the example of the GP with Russian secret services, if 99% of the Russian speaking people you encounter are from the secret services, does it make it acceptable to discriminate against the 1% to save your life? If yes, then what is the limit? 50%, 10%, just one person, ...?
Further to the point, this isn't about discriminating against those Russians. This is about fearing them, because all Russians have a "super power", and can destroy you with a single word.
No court. No sensible attempts to truly examine the truth. Just a firing squad.
In this context, even "Good" Russians, fear the "Bad" Russians, for they may be labelled 'collaborators', and face the firing squad too.
That's not how that worked. "If the communism didn't consider you an enemy" is more apt and an average Hungarian had no way of telling how anything they say could be interpreted.
I believe that's exactly what lyu07282 actually implied (that it doesn't even matter if you're a "feminist" but what matters is if the "feminists" consider you an enemy; and that the average "Hungarian" has no way of telling how anything they say could be interpreted by "feminists"). Replace terms in quotes with whatever else feels appropriate - the bottom line is that mob justice lacks due process and is dangerous/very likely does more harm than good.
I feel the distinction is critical in this case - GP implies it's a matter of a quality that you have ("you are the enemy of communism"), while in reality any qualities you had were irrelevant - it only mattered what someone else decided about you, arbitrarily, and with a good incentive for being biased about it.
> in reality any qualities you had were irrelevant - it only mattered what someone else decided about you, arbitrarily, and with a good incentive for being biased about it.
I really don't know how to make this any more clear to you, you almost there. And now think an inch further...
Let's say you're a communist in Hungary in that year: would you still walk in the street very calm? Even if you are a communist, demonstrating that to a Russian communist wouldn't be very easy, don't you think? Saying "hey I love communism!" wouldn't cut it.
Yeah, I read the context. If you're scared of someone because they speak Russian, then you're being racist. Probably. Potentially some sort of nationalism.
Our hypothetical clam doesn't know that the speaker is in the KGB or equivalent. They're stereotyping based on rumours, ethnicity and background. It doesn't matter that they are behaving prudently, it is pretty clear-cut that they are making decisions based on the racial and ethnic stereotypes they know.
I'm the bearer of bad news here. Sometimes racism is a rational response. Strive to make it not so.
Society's perception of what qualifies as sexist has changed drastically in a few years. Who knows, maybe well meaning criticism will be considered truly sexist by society in another 10 years. Why take the risk?
The core issue here is that getting cancelled may be a low risk, but it's 1: substantially higher than it used to be; and 2: An existential / Severe setback tier event.
The fact that the wolves would be out regardless of the veracity of the claims, and that there is no viable avenue for recourse here aggravates this.
Wrapping this up as "sexism" is the same kind of logic that gets you the removal of women-only sports as "sexism".
There is a reason we differentiate terms like "accident" and "collision" in the English language. Using the same term to define multiple things is not helping men or women. Feminism, I believe, needs to make better use of language.
Even the law, which is usually the last to evolve, clearly understands the difference between a death caused by self defense and murder.
It's not only X% chance of being accused of sexism, but a very high chance to lose one's career - and possibly become un-hireable by any large company or to any position of responsibility at least for a while. It's not just that someone says "you're sexist" and you say "no, I'm not!" - it goes way beyond accusation, and accusation itself almost universally is considered as good as definite proof. This is a serious risk, and it's totally understandable that people want to avoid it.
1. 'Sexism' should be limited to acts of discrimination that undermine another sex.
2. Advice (which is essentially a gift of knowledge/experience) is not something you are entitled to by virtue of your sex.
3. A man cannot be said to be 'sexist' when he chooses not to give advice that could potentially incriminate him, especially falsely. If a person (whether a man or a woman) chooses to keep silent, and especially where no fraudulent aspect is involved, that is part and parcel of doing business. You are not entitled to call a person 'sexist' just because they do not want to give advice to you.
4. There are virtually no consequences to the woman who accuses. Yet in comparison, the long-lasting consequences of an investor being falsely accused in public far outweigh any advantages to the contrary. This is enough to make any man clam up, and is a legitimate cause to withhold advice.
5. More importantly, in a commercial setting, no one is obliged to give you an advantage just because you're a woman. If you expect such an advantage/benefit because of your gender, then you are being sexist. A woman who wants to do business should not posit that a man is actively being 'sexist' if he chooses not to help her. That makes no sense.
> There are virtually no consequences to the woman who accuses
So, women are being segregated before having any occasion to accuse men of sexism, and yet you claim that they would face 'no consequences' if they actually did?
Women are not 'being segregated' (which is a strawman argument on your part).
Men are refusing to giving advice, because there is past history of women falsely accusing them of being sexist when they do give it. Your claim purporting that it never happens - i.e. 'before having any occasion' - skews the time-perspective. And is against the odds that male investors have faced, which is why they now clam up.
This is nothing to do with 'segregation' - that's a silly interpretation on your part. Investors are wising up to hold their tongue, than to let aspersions be (falsely) cast upon them otherwise.
Fear based actions can still be sexist though. We're talking about treating people different based on their sex.
Let's draw a parallel. Most people would consider crossing the street because there is a black man walking towards you as a racist action. Sure, not burning a cross in their lawn racist, but racist nonetheless (it's a spectrum). I would argue that people that do this do so because they are afraid of said black person. Yes, their action is caused by fear, but their fear is caused by racism (i.e. they view a black person as being more likely to be dangerous than a person of another race).
Looping back, I believe you are right that these decisions are fear based, but it is fear that women are out to get you, which is the sexist part. In reality it does not appear that women are more out to get you than men are. Though we likely have a perception bias that they are because of social media. There's the double edged sword of awareness. It can help you solve a problem but it can also increase the problem because it can make you blind to the root issues.
I think this brings us to problems with social media or more precisely sensationalism (which is amplified in social media but far from the only platform that encourages this). These cases are more visible and gives us a selection bias. But I guess we have to encourage good faith discussions (which is a rule on HN btw) through media, which is rather difficult to do at a cultural level. And we don't want to entirely kill sensationalism either because topics going viral has a lot of utility (such as that more women are being open about the abuse that they've received. Yes, this does lead to a higher number of false accusations, but they still are a very small percentage of accusations). It's a really difficult problem but I think encouraging good faith arguments, being kind to one another, patience, and allowing for mistakes are a necessary step to be able to solve this entire issue (which I'm not going to pretend to have real answers). Particularly I think the last component is essential because we need to recognize that not everyone learns the same lessons. If we're going to say things like "everyone is racist" or "everyone is sexist" we have to also allow people to safely make mistakes and importantly be given the opportunity change/fix their behavior. I personally believe if people are not given this opportunity they double down on their ways. It is a coping mechanism because no one wants to be the bad guy.
I know you are being funny but this response does not feel like it was done in good faith (I may be misreading). A major part of my point is that there is a spectrum. "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" is often a false equivalence because it suggests that the two options are equally as bad. Intention must play a large role in how we're determining how to respond because someone with good intentions has a higher likelihood of improving/fixing their behavior than someone who does not have good intentions. But intention is substantially harder to determine. My comment is about fighting back against this binary sensationalization, which I believe you are perpetuating even with the joke.
So no, you aren't damned if you do and damned if you don't.
I don't think GP is saying that your comment by itself can be reduced to "damned if you do, damned if you don't". I think the point is that your position might lead to a Morton's fork in general.
I interpret it like this: On the one hand, there are people (many of whom with good intentions) instantly assuming that any criticism a man might give to a woman is rooted in sexism, to wit, what TFA mentions that investors are cautious about. On the other hand, there are people, also with good intentions, saying that "men being cautious in what they say to women" is also sexism.
Now, I don't know the solution either, but I do believe that a good first step would be not saying that people who are merely cautious (precisely not to come across as sexist) are sexist anyway.
I'm a bit confused, did I not respond in a way that recognized this? It appeared to me as a low quality response that did not actually have anything to do with my comment. I believe the comment vastly oversimplified the problem, which is part of what I'm trying to address, that the problem is complicated and we need to recognize the nuances involved and respond in good faith. To clarify, I do not think a good faith response results in
> instantly assuming that any criticism a man might give to a woman is rooted in sexism
As such a belief is itself rooted in the belief that the only criticism a man can have of a woman is that she is a woman, which I'd argue itself is sexist (and not responding in good faith). As an example we saw this during the 2016 election where people often said that anyone who criticized Clinton was doing so because she was a woman, which honestly is an extremely dehumanizing platform. While there were people criticizing her on this basis (openly and through more careful language) the claim itself positions Clinton as being infallible and thus not human, which is absurd. This is far from a good faith response because Clinton, as any human (and especially politicians/leaders), are deserving of criticism (not that you should be mean about it). So by a good faith response I would expect someone to respond to that criticism instead of accusing the other person of being sexist. But I honestly believe people making such claims are a minority, albeit with high visibility because of the sensational nature of their bad faith responses.
> It appeared to me as a low quality response that did not actually have anything to do with my comment.
I didn't think it was; it seemed to me a succinct summation of what calling the behavior in TFA "sexism" leads to: Ultimately, regardless of what he does, a man will be considered sexist by someone.
Or, to put it another way, calling the cautiousness we're discussing here "sexist" can itself be considered a bad faith position.
> But I honestly believe people making such claims are a minority, albeit with high visibility because of the sensational nature of their bad faith responses.
I'm not sure what to say to this: I agree, of course, but I don't think that's the point. That minority can and has killed people's careers and thus, we have the cautious behavior mentioned in TFA.
> Ultimately, regardless of what he does, a man will be considered sexist by someone.
I mean this is how I read it, but again, I thought it lacked nuance. Someone is key here and ties into how we respond to sensationalized perspectives. I'm advocating for more nuance and being more careful in interpretation. Such as not treating the term "sexist" as being a binary position. I would, and am, argue(ing) that interpreting the word as a binary classification is only detrimental. It in itself is a bad faith response. But we have a problem that "sexist" means different things to different people. While one may interpret my usage as such, I believe that there is sufficient information in my several comments that I am not using the word as such a classification (even explicitly stating so) and this is where I draw contention with the responses I'm getting.
It should be apparent that responding to me as if I am using such a binary classification will give me the impression that one simply skimmed and responded thinking "oh you're one of those people." I'm actively advocating for reducing this type of response, because I think we'd argue that binning people is far too common and leads to many of the problems (in fact, binning is the root of this entire post, thread, and conversation). This is why I'm saying that the damned if you do, damned if you don't is a false dichotomy as (as I stated in the original response) the actions are not equally as bad. It matters "how damned" someone is. My entire thesis lies in a continuum.
> That minority can and has killed people's careers and thus, we have the cautious behavior mentioned in TFA.
Maybe I can be more clear in my response to this. I am saying that how we are responding to sensationalized content is feeding into this behavior. We need tempered and thoughtful responses, not knee jerking emotional reactions (we don't have to be void from emotion). I don't think it is enough to just complain about these people, but that we are perpetuating this system by clicking, retweeting, liking, and pushing these comments into the forefront of our conversations. That minority has killed many peoples' careers (some justified some not, but we're presumably discussing the unjustified cases), but the reason these (unjustified cases) careers have been destroyed is because of public response and selection bias of what majority opinion is. As an example of this Speedy Gonzales was canceled because complaints/fear of ethnic sterotyping. But it was later brought back due to League of United Latin American Citizens noting that he was a cultural icon that was seen positively by Latin American viewers. It is a clear case of letting the minority's opinion overrule that of the majority. I believe that if we let people that are looking for problems dictate what a problem is then we'll only have a race to the bottom. I do not believe the people responding to me and downvoting would disagree, and that is where my confusion lies.
The problem here lies in the word "sexism" and that, I think, you believe a solution should be to remove its baggage. The replies you get are, I think, because many people, with good reason, believe that such a goal isn't feasible. In fact, the baggage itself is probably why you perceive the replies to be "emotional".
So I go back to my first reply: to stop casting people into a binary like I think we both want, better not to throw such loaded words at people and instead analyze their behavior on a case by case basis. Fighting the word itself is prescriptive at best, and language tends to be descriptive, AFAIK.
I'll push back a little, but it seems we're pretty much at consensus. We have to recognize that people use words in vastly different ways, especially as we're enabling more cultures to communicate. Around me "sexism" has this broader meaning and subsequently doesn't necessarily hold as much weight as the binary usage holds (though it can, but again, continuum). Unfortunately language is extremely imprecise and the dictionary not only lags societal definitions, but only reflects certain usages. Because of this it is important to recognize that language has multiple parts. There's: What someone says, what they mean to say (the information they are trying to convey through a function with limited expressiveness, i.e. language), and what is heard. If we don't recognize that these three things can result in three different interpretations then we're going to continue to have many of these problems. Rather if we look at language as the imprecise means of transporting information from one person to another it means we should rely less on the actual words said and more the intended meaning. This is more difficult to do, but it is something we commonly do with friends and people we know well. We need to apply this same restraint to others we don't know as well.
So if we're communicating with words meaning different things (which is extremely common but unnoticed) then we have to be careful that we don't lose meaning on the assumption that someone's message can only have one interpretation. We have to recognize the embedding problems and limitations of language to effectively communicate.
Everything you've written over several comments shows that you've thought about it deeply but are unable to provide an actionable solution for social interactions. Sure sensationalism causes problems, sure some of the accusations are valid but your nuance doesn't matter because you're missing the point. Men just don't want it to be them next. So we shut up. That has usually been the solution to any socially dangerous or awkward situation and for self preservation it works very well.
Any behavioral modifications would have to start from castigophobia. Remove the punishment - that's the solution. Everything else is pointless.
The actionable thing is that we need to change how we respond to sensationalism. Tempered responses. You cannot remove the punishment without this. Removing any punishment is too vague and is no change. Before we had no response. Now we have too strong of a response. I'm suggesting we be more thoughtful before we determine the proper response. This depends on how we, as the general population, respond to sensationalism. As long as we still click on (through anger or celebration) these types of headlines they will still continue because there's major profit. It is a "pick your battles" response that I'm looking for.
You proposal has no teeth and ignores the history and reality of mobs. It's like you expect unorganized people to be intelligent as a collective. That's foolish.
Removing any punishment isn't vague - just take it out of the hands of those who can currently inflict it:
1. Make it illegal to fire employees for any speech in the public square.
2. Make it so they have to be found guilty in a court of law in order to be fired or shunned for anything sexist or racist.
3. Make it so that any publicly funded institution (even partly) cannot terminate their relationships with individuals because of their speech in the past or the future.
Right now what we're seeing is extrajudicial punishment instigated at the will of anyone with a twitter account and following. The above suggestions reduce the twitter mob's leverage because they shouldn't have any to begin with. Anyone seeking damages should have to go through channels that allow some kind of defense. The court system is supposed to be systemized thoughtfulness so we should rely on it.
The way I see it playing out is that companies will force all employees off of social media with their own names or fewer people will attack companies because they know that the company can't do anything. Both cases are a positive change.
You're being optimistic about vengeful people online. I don't think you're being realistic.
I see your proposals as having the same requirements as mine.
> 1. Make it illegal to fire employees for any speech in the public square.
So you can't fire an employee that is causing an uproar and a subsequent boycott of your product? Because that's why they get fired now, to prevent a decrease in sales. The only way maintaining the employee and the sales is for the public to recognize that an employee (including a CEO) does not represent the company (which in a case of a CEO can be shaky). This is a tricky situation that I think you're overly simplifying.
> 2. Make it so they have to be found guilty in a court of law in order to be fired or shunned for anything sexist or racist.
I feel a bit better about this. But this lines up with my tempered approach. I think this may be a bit too light handed though. For example, it is legal to be a Neo Nazi. That is protected by free speech. But if a high level employee is openly a Neo Nazi then that's going to affect your sales.
> 3.
Same goes here.
I think these solutions are too simple that they miss the nuance I'm asking for.
> Right now what we're seeing is extrajudicial punishment instigated at the will of anyone with a twitter account and following.
This is a huge problem that I'm concerned about. But I don't see a way around it without having society act better.
Well I do see one other solution, but it has a lot of consequences too. Twitter/Facebook/etc could change their algorithms to prevent these cases from going viral. But there's big consequences to that and makes them arbiters of "*ism". That's also a dangerous situation and honestly a position I don't think Mark or Jack wants to be in.
> You're being optimistic about vengeful people online.
I'm not optimistic about them. I'm optimistic about the public. That the general public will get tired of this shit. Getting tired will cause less clicks, which will cause less rage, and momentum will dampen the system. But right now we have media resonating with this vocal minority because it brings in dollars. People still click a lot on hate porn (articles like "You won't believe how dumb {Republicans,Democrats} are" or "Watch this {Democrat,Republican} get totally destroyed!"). People are already getting sick of it, that's why we're having this discussion. So I'm saying fight by not clicking. Increase the momentum back to normality.
How exactly does sexism being a spectrum and not binary help men make decisions on this issue in any way whatsoever?
Do you think a slight or partial interpretation of sexism (even if misconstrued completely and therefore a false interpretation) will be treated with this nuance and proportionality you speak of by someone who wishes to publicize and cancel as described in this article?
The entire point here is that whether 9/10, or 999/1000 interactions with women go exactly or even better than interactions with men, it ONLY TAKES ONE to literally ruin your life. Get it?
Because of this, the natural defensive reaction is to avoid interactions and conflicts altogether, out of abundance of caution.
Is this sexism? Who the hell cares! Peoples livelihoods are on the line! That you would care more about your little intellectual exercises and nuanced view of the "isms" means absolutely nothing compared to putting bread on the table, or not, for most people.
One could even say this makes you privileged to even think they should care about this more than protecting themselves and supporting their families.
I want to clarify that I'm also arguing that the consequences shouldn't be binary. There's utility in treating sexism as a continuum, but if consequences continue to be binary then we lose the utility of the continuous definition.
I think people need to learn about how power and politics work in the real world. This, like many other things, is political.
The people that are making these binary determinations to wield social power could not care less about the academic nuanced views everyone is discussing here in the comments. They are not acting in good faith, so reasoning with them will not work.
I agree that they aren't acting in good faith. But a big problem is how we, the rest of the public respond. We click all those links, share all those tweets, and talk about the responses. As long as those people get to hold our attention then they have power. It is like dealing with a troll. You don't get rid of trolls by getting mad at them or "owning" them. You can't fight them with logic or anything. You fight a troll by pretending they don't exist.
I appreciate you asking respectfully, and I understand the meanings of words like "sexist" and "racist" are changing and subject to opinion.
In my opinion, the nuance is whether the difference is truly because of gender or if gender is just something with a high correlation.
For example, if an average man says to me "give me your wallet or I'll beat you up", I'm likely to do it since I'm on the smaller side. If an average woman did that, I'd say no. So maybe it seems like sexism at first, but then I consider, if a woman threatened me who was the size and build and general risk of an average man, what would I do? I'd hand over my wallet.
I would not say you are acting sexist in your analogy. If we take average male vs average female, yes there is a large strength disparity and your response seems very justified. It is clear that your response is more linked to the danger that you're in. I would contrast this from my analogy (black person walking towards you and crossing the street) because there's not a good justification for thinking that the black person is more likely to mug you than if a white person was walking towards you (there's no justification for increased danger). I'd argue that the priors are different in these situations (I'm sure there are people that would disagree and call your response sexist, but I will say that my thesis is about not binning people to easy little boxes. "us vs them". That responses need to be thoughtful and tempered).
> I understand the meanings of words like "sexist" and "racist" are changing and subject to opinion.
Also on this point, I think this kind of "words having different meanings to different people" is far more common than people realize and requisites more care in how we interpret others' statements. I think this is obviously true for any "ism" (sexism, racism, capitalism, socialism, etc). Pinning a definition to strictly our own interpretation ends up being naive and often leads to fighting because we have basic breakdowns in communication. We can't agree even if philosophically we agree. It should be the other way around, meaning triumphing over diction. Diction over meaning is just looking for a fight.
It didn't used to be a spectrum and it's a terrible innovation that it's viewed that way today by so many. Racist used to refer to people that believed in the inferiority and superiority of certain races. Only recently has it become socially acceptable to accuse someone of racism or sexism at any sign of prejudice. This is a major cause of the divisiveness in the culture today and if you're doing it, you're part of the problem.
When we talk about people's prejudices it causes us to examine potential solutions in a productive way. When we accuse someone of being racist or sexist, we imply that they're beyond redemption, and we can skip right to hating them and feeling superior about ourselves.
Anyone interested in having good faith conversations should actively avoid labeling anyone or any action as a racist or sexist. The genuine racists and sexists are usually more than happy to self-identify as such. Everyone else, and I mean everyone else, is just a mixed bag of good and bad prejudices that can, with work, be improved over time.
> It didn't used to be a spectrum and it's a terrible innovation that it's viewed that way today by so many. Racist used to refer to people that believed in the inferiority and superiority of certain races. Only recently has it become socially acceptable to accuse someone of racism or sexism at any sign of prejudice. This is a major cause of the divisiveness in the culture today and if you're doing it, you're part of the problem.
I'd argue that people now are still treating it as a binary situation and not including the nuance that is requisite of a spectrum in determining their response. As an exaggerated example we can't treat a grand wizard who burns crosses on lawns the same as someone who touches someone else's hair. If we react the same then the reaction is not acknowledging the continuum but rather lowering the threshold for the binary classification.
> When we talk about people's prejudices it causes us to examine potential solutions in a productive way. When we accuse someone of being racist or sexist, we imply that they're beyond redemption, and we can skip right to hating them and feeling superior about ourselves.
I think we actually have a lot of agreement. Reading your response I think a lot of our disagreement comes down to diction, not philosophy. When you say
> Everyone else, and I mean everyone else, is just a mixed bag of good and bad prejudices that can, with work, be improved over time
I fully agree, I just use different words because that's the words used around me. Words only mean what society uses them to mean. This is a big part of why I mentioned intention being an important component. I don't view someone that is racist/sexist as being nonredeemable, this includes Neo Nazis and Grand Dragons of the KKK (I know this is an unpopular belief, but it is one I hold). This is part of why I said that we need safe spaces to fail. I do think how we react needs to be tempered and thought out because my goal is to fix behavior, not punish. But if you lump me together with those that seek punishment (I believe this is a minority, but highly sensationalized minority) we're going to have a hard time discussing. Because I don't have major qualms with what you've said and I don't understand how you read my comment as such.
> accuse someone of racism or sexism at any sign of prejudice
At anything that the most hostile interpretation possible could somehow construe as racism/sexism.
And basically, anything can be construed as racism/sexism given some of the current definitions.
Sitting peacefully on your couch minding your own business is racism, according to Kendi/diAngelo.
Treating women equally and not achieving perfect equality of outcome is sexism. Treating men and women differently in order the achieve equality of outcome: also sexism.
Leaving women to make their own choices, which may not exactly match men's, is sexism.
Giving women candid feedback is so sexism. Not giving women candid feedback: also sexism.
> Most people would consider crossing the street because there is a black man walking towards you as a racist action.
Yeah, and that is weird, isn't it?
Because most people nowadays would not consider it a sexist action for a woman to cross the street because there is a man walking.
In fact, these days it seems to be demanded of men to notice the situation and cross the street if they are walking near a woman, so to self-discriminate. And the man would be considered sexist/misogynist if they didn't self-discriminate this way.
> why create a world in which everything is sexist?
I'm sorry if it was interpreted this way (I know some people want this, but this is not what I'm advocating for).
> Isn't the entire point that we want less of it?
This is goal. But we also can't solve a problem if we don't acknowledge it. To do that expanding the definition helps. BUT if you expand the definition you need to also respond differently (this is where I disagree with what we see). We need to see nuance that there's a big difference between rape and not being as open with advice due to potentially becoming a social pariah. Our responses to these should be extremely different (which is what I'm advocating for). But this also means we need to recognize our progress (which I've been accused of for dog whistling having said that).
I just think we need to stop making our fights over diction and about philosophy. If we're placing diction over philosophy we'll never solve anything and always be fighting. We can never have unanimous agreement on diction, that's just not how language works (words evolve). So the question is if your disagreements with me mainly over word choice or if we have disagreements in philosophy (and are they minor or major?)
You're treating women differently based on their gender. That's literally sexism.
What's different is the moral color of the sexism. If Eric treats women differently in his workplace because he thinks they should be raising babies, not writing code, our cultural norms say Eric is a Bad Person.
Now suppose Bob genuinely believes women and men should have equal opportunities and career paths in the workplace. But Bob treats women differently in his workplace because he's afraid of a false accusation that ends up with him getting sued, fired, having his reputation ruined, etc.
Then we'd say that Bob isn't a bad person. Or at the very least, he's not anywhere near as bad as Eric. He's just trying to do his best to protect himself from a social system he doesn't control, that will grind him up if he gets caught in its gears.
If you take the definition of "sexism" to be "treating people differently based on their gender," the case against Bob is airtight. Bob's literally a sexist: He treats women differently because of gender.
I think the reason you're trying to argue Bob's not a sexist is because the word "sexist" itself is normative. Sexists are Bad People like Eric. Bob's not a Bad Person, so we shouldn't use the word "sexist" to describe him, because "sexist" has a moral color -- part of the meaning of the label is that you're a Bad Person.
In other words, if you say Bob's not a sexist, you must be taking your definition of "sexist" to be something else. Treating women differently for a certain kind of reason.
With this more nuanced definition of "sexist," it's possible that Eric's a sexist and Bob is not, even if their actual actions toward women are the same.
To properly describe what Bob is, you might need to create a new word to describe someone who treats women differently, but in a morally neutral way (or at least a lighter shade of grey).
Racism might also benefit from having a term that fills this linguistic / conceptual niche. ("Systemic racism" might have fit the bill at one time, but I think that particular term has become colored -- pun intended -- by a moral connotation.)
So if I work in a department store, and I direct the women to the lady's clothing section, and the men to the men's clothing section, I am a sexist? Or if I'm a hairdresser, and I charge women the price of a women's cut, and men the price of a men's cut, then I'm a sexist? Your black and white definition is nothing other than an attempt to double-down on calling more things sexist than they actually are. It does not pass the common sense test. Sexism always has negative connotations. If the person is not viewed as a bad person (as you say) for their actions, then their actions were not sexist.
Basically the me too movement and the way in which men cannot defend themselves from sexual accusations back fired. Very predictable that this happened, there’s no easy solution.
It's perhaps a bit much to conclude from some anecdotes in this thread that the me too movement backfired (i.e., was a net negative for women in the workplace) as a whole.
Your conclusion is as subjective as his is. There is no real objective criteria by which the "net negative" could be measured. Even history will not be objective, because it will be written by those in power. However I'm of the same mind as him, that this has been more negative than positive for three reasons:
1) This was a precedent for public shaming without evidence or due process
2) This generally changed the working dynamic between male and female to something extremely formal and sometimes borderline hostile
3) It was a bandwagon for actresses(and eventually other careers) to make money because of 1)
You misread. I did not make any conclusions in my post.
I do lean towards the opposite opinion. But I'm in no position to judge definitively whether the net effect has been positive or negative so far, I'd need to interview a sizeable and representative sample of women for that.
Responding to your points:
1) What's missing from this argument is how we get to this point. IMO, the reason public shaming was used by the movement as a way to achieve justice, is because from their point of view, there was no other way to achieve justice. It's a classic example of "taking matters into their own hands" because the system failed them. Public shaming isn't the end goal, it should be a wake-up call to restore faith in the system.
2) I don't feel like anything meaningful changed in how I interact with female coworkers since metoo. But I only have my own experience to go on, so I won't make any big claims here.
3) Even if this is true (citation needed), it seems irrelevant.
If your statement is not a conclusion(albeit not a certain one), than what is it?
1) Do you have faith in the newfound public judgement system which by the way uses privately owned platforms for its media? Would you prefer it over the judicial system which has been developing over the past few centuries with all its flaws? Even with its flaws, the alternative for me is a hundred times worse.
3) Some women decided to pursue public figures and since they knew the damage that could be done to their target's image it was settled before court. I don't keep a record of such news and they are usually quickly buried as part of the deal.
> If your statement is not a conclusion(albeit not a certain one), than what is it?
Do you agree that there is a substantial difference between stating "I think/believe X is true" and stating "X is true"?
In my view, you can only honestly use the second form if you can back it up at least somewhat. You don't need 100% certainty, but definitely more than anecdotes.
My first comment in this thread was a criticism of someone using the latter form without backing it up. In a trivial sense it is indeed a conclusion, but not one about the outcome of the #metoo movement, but one about the parent comment: that it asserts a claim with unwarranted confidence.
1) No, I do not have faith in a public shaming based justice system. I also did not argue that this should be the new normal. But our established justice system has evidently been systematically failing women, and it needed a wake-up call to take their grievances seriously. A justice system should never see its own legitimacy as a given: it is kept honest by the knowledge that if people stop seeing it as legitimate, they will seek justice in other avenues.
3) Again, I don't see how this is relevant to the question we are discussing, which is "has #metoo been a net positive for women?" It seems to be an argument for the statement "it has been bad for some men who did not deserve it", but that's a broader question.
I don't think it's surprising that a movement that advocated successfully that the accusations do not require evidence, has created an environment of fear.
I don't experience it that way, but let's assume for the sake of argument that you're right.
The topic of discussion was whether #metoo was a net positive or a net negative for women. Simply saying that it has created an environment of fear does not address this question at all. Even if true, perhaps having some people be afraid is a net positive for women in the workplace? Or perhaps it is negative, but other positive outcomes of the movement outweigh it?
I think a lot of what is going on in society right now comes down to people buying into a worldview about victims and villains. When we talk about any ism, most people understand that to be a dynamic where one side of the ism is the oppressor - a villain, and the other side the oppressed - a victim.
And as this article points out, the zeitgeist of the moment is the presumption of guilt, so any accusation of being an *ist comes with tremendous consequences, and people are understandably fearful of that.
What you're observing that this creates an unfortunate vicious cycle: the fear of persecution for an accidental offense leads to disengagement which disadvantages the very people who the disengagement is meant "not to hurt."
This isn't a new observation.
MLK said: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction ... The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." [1]
I think this is where the extremes of "wokeism" and "social justice" miss the mark. When the mob is rallied to punish and seek vengeance against those who have done wrong, it can become a witch hunt.
To Dr. King the path to victory over oppression was through forgiveness[2].
"Here then is the Christian weapon against social evil. We are to go out with the spirt of forgiveness, heal the hurts, right the wrongs and change society with forgiveness. Of course we don't think this is practical. This is the solution of the race problem."
In the hypermedia era I honestly don't know if calm, civil discourse is possible. It certainly isn't profitable compared to the level of engagement driven by outrage.
But I think if we wanted to take the next major step forward it would be wise to look back at how much progress happened during the Civil Rights era, and specifically to understand how and why the progress was made. Can we imagine applying Dr. King's words today, to seek to understand each other, to identify wrongs done intentionally or unintentionally, and then to forgive each other for past mistakes so we can do better going forward?
On the contrary, it shows a clear imbalance of power towards repetitional destruction, something that was always in a women's arsenal but much less so in a man's (which would favour, let's say, settling things in a fight).
So, considering you are the potential carrier of a nuclear power it makes sense to thread carefully.
The problem isn't sexism. The problem is that being wrongly labeled as a sexist is a socio-economical death blow while the accusers gets scot free. This imbalance in power has to be settled somehow and I think this is a pretty good solution.
What's sexist is the lack of agency ascribed to women, as in: success/failure is something that happens to women and something men work for/through. That is the textbook definition of objectification, very much the norm even today and in my mind perpetuated by modern woke feminism framing everything as "we're being oppressed", singling out men's contributions to the situation and ignoring women's own.
I have the deepest sympathy for any hardship you have experienced. From the conversations I've had with my sister and colleagues, it's obvious sexism and its effects are real.
That said, your post frames it as if your career is not in your own hands. Please afford yourself some more agency. I have overcome a narcissist parent, academic failure, classism and depression, working my way up to programming and a college degree on my own dime. I find it's fundamentally unproductive to see yourself as a car vendor mascot, being dragged whichever the wind blows. Engage with the people holding you back to get what you need and change your environment if there's no other way.
I found "Nice girls [still] don't get the corner office" (the second edition added the "still") by Lois P. Frankel educational. The book's about her practice as a career coach for women and lists the mistakes her clients make to subconsciously sabotage their own careers. Of the 101 errors in the first print, I recognised a good 30% in myself. All this to say: it's not because there's sexism and perceived sexism that there's nothing else going on.
Reminds me of the phenomenon recorded of men avoiding women after the original #metoo thing.
Part of this is that I think that men feel they are walking on egg shells. The kinds of male assertiveness that my wife found attractive when she met me also can leave women who aren't into this assertiveness feeling harassed.
I feel that we need to be clear more about what is "desirable" masculinity it "desirable assertiveness" vs its toxic counterparts. Failure to do this will essentially neuter men over the long term - and it will lead to "men clamming up" or worse, a significant surge in the number of men who "go their own way" be it in the job or at home in their personal life.
I guess there's going to be a calibration period. The pendulum was stuck, it's started swinging, and the first few swings are completely out of whack. We'll get there, eventually.
There's no reason to assume that. The system could be destabilized because while a pendulum with two sides has a stable a world with many many competing interests and nonlinear feedback systems might not.
I'm not worried about a matriarchy either; what I am worried about is a permanent state of cold war between identity groups, which is where it seems we're headed.
This is a gross exaggeration. Power struggles have been with us since the beginning of time.
Men and women will get along as they always have, with ups and downs. There are no "identity groups" because we aren't and can't be enemies. There are just a few loonies on both sides making a ton of noise, and they're getting amplified by the internet. They'll either get boring at some point or just be ignored completely from the outside of their circles.
Some very real issue have been highlighted in the last few years, issues that we really should have dealt with decades ago and I think you're right, there's currently an overreaction from society. That's will correct it self, even if some may still not like where we end up.
Sadly if you're concerned with these overreaction, and voice those concerns, you will be labelled as being against the chance. You quickly learn to shut up and just wait it out.
> Sadly if you're concerned with these overreaction, and voice those concerns, you will be labelled as being against the change. You quickly learn to shut up and just wait it out.
This is a smart move for any kind of group/mob move/reaction, by the way. In much more extreme cases you'd be the smart, polite, but dead guy in the crowd, otherwise.
Crowds as a whole are rash and emotional, you can't reason with them. There's a reason Animal Farm had 10 word slogans, at most ;-)
I'll probably get downvoted for this but I think desirable vs toxic masculinity tends to depend on whether the woman in question finds the man in question attractive.
Lookism is the final -ism that lacks a social justice movement. Incels and disfigured people are the closest thing to the "underclass" of physical attractiveness.
Yes, many time the distinction in the margins between toxic and desirable masculinity is partially based on the attractiveness of the person in question.
For what it's worth - men and women are equally bad in regards to lookism. I think we need to simply start explicitly saying that we shouldn't discriminate because someone is ugly. If RMS were as attractive as Micheal foucault, he wouldn't get in trouble for those age of consent beliefs (foucault, an attractive leftist, famously defended lowering the age of consent)
I would appreciate it if someone could explain to me why this comment was downvoted.
It takes a stance based on the parent comment and gives an example where they believe looks had considerable differences in the behavior of society towards somebody. The example is not perhaps the best, but the fact that society actually shows favouritism towards attractive people should not be controversial.
One of the most offended I’ve seen my wife be was when she was told the only reason she wanted an assertive man was because she was brainwashed and deep down didn’t want it and was actually oppressed. She was a victim of the white male patriarchy and by being part of it she was an implicit supporter of racism. Meaning she had her agency to be her own person and have her own desires taken away from her, at least in this person’s eyes. She ended up not talking to this other person because she couldn’t get over the condescension. The feeling that the other person thought they were more enlightened or better than her. The only times I have stopped friendships have been similar - feeling like the other person looked down on me because of my choices or who I was.
I think there is a lot of pain brewing, and whether or not people come out the other side of it more entrenched in their worldview, or with more humility after having learned from the wild ride we are currently on.
Heck maybe I’ll come out the other side finally believing that there is only one true way to look at people and relationships and power differences, and any deviation from that is violence.
This is a really great piece. While it's unfortunate this phenomenon occurs, in a way it's also an opportunity for the many talented female VCs in the industry. I hope they capitalize on it!
I’ve seen professional women get negative feedback when they favored a qualified man over a slightly less qualified woman. I can imagine a female VC would be under the same pressure to remain silent lest they be lit up on Twitter for being female and yet still sexist.
I mean, why not, right? If gays can allegedly have "internalised homophobia", then why can't women have "internalised misogyny".
And so it goes. When we jettison reason, everyone gets to say what they want, and no-one gets to say that one conclusion is more soundly-based that another.
Anecdotal but my office is ultra-woke. There are endless internal emails about whatever-week, or veterans-this, or LBGTQ+-that etc etc. People have been hounded out and either quit or been fired for fairly minor "infractions" of the groupthink (...and also some people have rightly been fired for actual inappropriate behaviour).
And guess what all this talk about "toxic masculinity" and generally vilifying all men leads to? If you said "chilling effect" then you are bang on. It is a bloody minefield. Keep your head down, never talk about non-work stuff, refuse to provide feedback or do interviews, refuse to help people out unless it is directly your job' responsibility to do so etc and hope you don't get fired.
It genuinely feels like I have a target on my back.
Maybe seek therapy? "I want to be publicly labelled as an abuser" seems like an unhealthy thought pattern. If this is causing you that much grief, you should seriously consider talking to someone. It might make you feel a lot better, and you won't even have to have your life ruined.
edit Please explain downvotes? Suggesting a person saying "I want someone to cancel me" seek help is downvote worthy now?
I'm usually against cancel culture. Except against those that partake in it. I'll admit I feel a lot of schadenfreude when those people get canceled themselves and they're held to their own standards.
The important question today is what we would have done if Joseph McCarthy had been right. If (in some bizarre parallel universe) he was somehow right about Communists doing...Communist things and we all definitely agreed on this, would we have applauded his tactics?
The cancel culture crowd today seem to think yes. They look to him as an idol and see his only flaw as his unjust cause.
I don’t think I agree. Extrajudiciality should be shunned in all its forms even if it leads to bad people meeting bad ends.
Now you know how the other side felt all along :).
Seriously, we are now asked to treat everyone with respect and that is a problem?
Edit: No I don't mean eye for eye. I am merely pointing out, this is a male dominant industry where women didn't even have a chance for a long time. The moment we face little uneasiness, we are complaining and throwing temper tantrums.
OP is perhaps suggesting that a system where nobody feels like they have a target on their back is possible. Such that we don't (as you appear to tacitly admit we do) simply creature a culture that is still toxic, but for different people.
No, that's not the problem. It's that offense is easy to take at anything and companies erring on the side of caution will prefer to get rid so they appear to be doing something. Whether it is right or not doesn't matter by the time the truth is out the actions have been taken.
You wrote 2 sentences and still managed to contradict yourself.
Either parent and 'other side' have been both victimised (by him now knowing how they felt) or parent isn't a victim but since you claim he is experiancing what 'the other side' did neither were they.
Every sense of morality transformed into abuse has at least some basis in what would be called real objective good.
You cannot simplify the problems of "woke culture" as "asking everyone to treat others with respect", because that is not what is happening on the dark side of "woke" and you can't pretend that the dark side doesn't exist.
The problem isn’t to treat people with respect.
The problem is that some few people are absolutely hellbent on interpreting any interaction through a lens of sexism or racism, and a large silent majority allows them for fear of drawing unwanted attention and/or harm.
This is not to say that sexism or racism isn’t or hasn’t been a large problem, but the correction pendulum has really swung way too far for some people and that is actually not at all helpful since it only builds up resentment among people who actually are supporters of the cause of equality.
> The problem is that some few people are absolutely hellbent on interpreting any interaction through a lens of sexism or racism, and a large silent majority allows them for fear of drawing unwanted attention and/or harm.
A lot of people might not just be that good at what they do but manage to advance by way of their gender/race and scare away any negative feedback. Thus, given that their skills themselves won't save them, leveraging mob justice to do so is a viable strategy for them.
Document the hostile work environment in a journal, look for new positions, and quit when it becomes too much of a threat to your wellbeing. If you decide to quit or get fired, use your documentation of the environment as a basis for filing for unemployment benefits or if it merits it, higher levels of complaint/compensation.
The "progressive" cause is just as capable of doing wrong as the "conservative" cause; there is this general perception that being "woke" is the moral high ground and if you're against the "conservative" people who are jerks then you and your peers do no wrong.
In fact it seems like the conservative jerks and the "woke" jerks are doing the exact same thing - abusing groups of peoples and behaviors in order to show off their moral superiority.
A bunch of young people in the past generations left the church because they saw church people hating on folks who didn't fit their definition of "good people" and saw that definition distorted into abusing folks that deserved to be who they were. The exact same behaviors are showing up and getting stronger in the "woke" community, just with different targets. I'm still waiting for the popular backlash against the "woke" agenda - probably just the next generation of kids rebelling against their parents' ideals.
I have a target on my back too and occasionally am treated like a predator, but I also have the privilege that though it isn't harmless to me, I usually have the ability to get up and exit the situation treating me poorly. This is what everybody should try to cultivate - the freedom to quit a bad situation and not be a slave to a particular job, group of people, life plan, etc. When you can say "I would like to do this but I have other options" then it becomes a whole lot harder to be abused because when bad things happen you can just say goodbye.
Funny I work in a similar workplace and don't find that "all men" are vilified, or that being conscientious about the impact my words and actions have on marginalized people has any negative impact on my behavior. Maybe it's a you problem
>Funny I work in a similar workplace and don't find that "all men" are vilified, or that being conscientious about the impact my words and actions have on marginalized people has any negative impact on my behavior. Maybe it's a you problem
This is a great example. The Elect tolerate nothing less than full throated support of the cause/outrage du jour, and anyone taking a moderate position is branded a problem, just as you've done here.
I am not ‘TLightful’, but I’m guessing it’s because you used the term “The Elect”, which only certain groups use. It’s one of the shibboleths of these modern times.
The groups agreeing with that author, basically. The author is black, yes, but he also (according to Wikipedia) criticizes a number of left-wing and activist educators, the anti-racism movement, the concept of “microaggressions” and has denounced affirmative action based on race. So he is, understandably, not without controversy and detractors. Coming back to the term “The Elect”, it is a term adopted by him to make a political point. Therefore, only people who agree with that point will use the term, and people who disagree with that point (or with him, more broadly) will take affront to the term, as is the custom of these modern times.
Your experience in an environment doesn't match someone else's experience in an environment you think is similar, so they are wrong and you are right?
Isn't this a core of the whole "woke" thing? Just because you have a nice experience doesn't mean everybody does and you shouldn't silence somebody not having a good time because you don't understand or have the same experience.
Care to define what those "fairly minor infractions of the groupthink" were?
With respect, and I'm not saying this is you, but often I've heard that type of line - and then when you get into the detail, the firing was an obvious correct decision.
Edit: lol @ the downvotes, you can k!ss my @ss. Glad to have you here as I guess you were rejected from Parler.
Given the context is the dogmatic approach to office culture, this comment is super ironic. Of course the firings were a correct decision from your (insane and skewed) perspective.
>>Given the context is the dogmatic approach to office culture, this comment is super ironic. Of course the firings were a correct decision from your (insane and skewed) perspective.
Without the facts of the matter, you're talking out of your h'arse.
Either firings are legal or not. They have nothing to do with office culture.
Insane and skewed? ... yes, yes you are. Well done for identifying it, it's just your aim is about 180 degrees wrong. I imagine you have that issue frequently in life.
Have a nice day :) (you absolute, unmitigated pr!ck, lol)
Please don't break the site guidelines like that. Getting downvoted sucks, but it happens to everyone and one condition of participating in threads here is not to make them go haywire when it happens.
Edit: you've unfortunately been posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments repeatedly elsewhere as well. Can you please not? We're trying for something different here.
Once apon a time there were a group of people who swaggered through life saying whatever popped into their brains whom ever it offended or belittled. They engaged in metaphorical, but brutal, wrestling matches not just with each other but with any body who crossed their paths.
Now life is very hard for them.
Should have happened thirty years ago. Has it gone too far? Probably. <sound of a very small violin>
Reflecting decades later I think they were probably mostly insecure, and at the time I realised they were mostly only marginally competent.
"Only a fucking idiot would do that" meaning "I do not know what you are talking about but if I admit it I might look bad, so I will attack you instead"
Some times they were truly brilliant. I could call out some very famous project leaders (one of whom attacked me on a mailing list on a topic over which I was an expert and he was not. Deeply personal attacks) but I do not think it would be helpful. There are plenty of examples, and they are easy to find in old logs.
But times are changing and being a total prick to prove a point is not tolerated in the worlds I (mostly) move in now. It takes debate and reasoning to prove your point.
Should have happened thirty years ago. We lost a generation to fields where asbestos suits were not mandatory to participate. That was literally the advice for almost every forum back in the day "wear your asbestos suit"
Please don’t express your experiences or opinions on things. If you were one of these _____ , we would love to hear your life experiences or opinions on things. Because you were not born one of these ____, we don’t.
Regards,
Your Morally Superior GroupThink Social Overlords
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, regardless of how strongly you feel about a topic. Nothing good can come of this—just internet hellfire, which leads to scorched earth, which is all the same, which is uninteresting.
I utterly adore that my workplace has a strict ban on using any company resources such as the email system for non-work related business. The one time in eight years someone sent a political email they were formally reprimanded.
This is more common than not in traditional enterprises and businesses. It feels like a unique trait of the Silicon Valley bubble (and places testing to emulate it).
This is kind of the end result we're heading for, where you can only talk candidly with people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy. The shitty part is that I'm pretty sure 99% of people are reasonable human beings but the media has to make it seem like that isn't the case so the risk equation changes. Similar to how kids used to roam around the neighborhood but now it's deemed too risky because the media makes it seem like there are murderers lurking around every corner.
> where you can only talk candidly with people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy
Wouldn't someone talking to someone "lower" on the "oppression hierarchy" just be what we basically have today? That sounds like "privilege," or an "imbalanced power dynamic." I think you'll only be able to talk to equals, whatever that is, and by whatever metric is en vogue for that day.
People don’t talk candidly most of the time now to those lower on the hierarchy. In many Corp environments, almost no one talks candidly to anyone - too many minefields.
You’d generally only talk candidly to those who were not just peers, but you already had a deep seated existing rapport with and trust. Friends?
Everyone else gets the politically safe story that is supposed to be told. I’ve seen it in action, and it makes me sad because it becomes fundamentally corrosive.
And if you think for some people that doesn’t include the right kind of outrage discussion or telling the right stories to the visible oppressed minority they’re mentoring so they can get the right checkbox when they hopefully get considered for SVP (or as plan B, their mentee does) - I’ve also got a bridge to sell you.
I believe when OP says "lower on the oppression hierarchy" they mean we only talk candidly with those who are as oppressed as us or less. i.e. someone higher on the oppression hierarchy would be more oppressed.
yes, i have been perceiving same as he sayed. my thinking is that this is a bad thing for persons who are having less advantages: if white manager can give forthright feedback to only white persons this is actual bad for black one and maybe will harm the black one more than it help. this is likewise if most in office are feeling less cameraderie with a black for that they are not able speaking so openly and believe they are having to guard tongues. i wonder about these un-intended consecuences.
I do some work with HIV prevention. Sometimes I give talks where I'm very blunt about the realities of HIV among men who have sex with men. I've watched people immediately shift from mild hostility and discomfort to wholehearted acceptance of what I am saying, when I tell them I'm gay myself.
In that circumstance, I think it is clear that my sexual orientation is the basis by which they are judging the authoritativeness I have to speak on the topic. Never mind the formal qualifications, or the logic or veracity of what I am actually saying. Like, I know we all have little unconscious checklists like that for judging whether someone is credible, but it is uncomfortable to see the effect live.
As a bisexual male, I think a good part of disdain about connecting HIV and gay goes to the older naming of the disease: GRID. gay-related immune deficiency
It also dates me, but I had a blood transfusion in 1982. At that time, it was a Russian Roulette if I ended up with HIV blood or not. I didn't. Had I been innfected, I would have ended up like Ryan White.
Quite illustrative. People have referential groups, that’s human nature. One could work with the framework to achieve desired result and hopefully minimize externalities, or one can lament biases and lambast the biased people for extra whatever points.
This is not a dig at you, btw, it seems clear that you’re making the best of the situation.
You'd think so, but I have seen this specific idea play out and in one case the "trusted female peer" accused the person doing the asking of expecting her to do his emotional labor.
It's the most obvious one. According to Public Health Canada, men who have sex with men are 71x more likely to become HIV+ during their lives than men who have sex with women. Based on the infection rate modelling of the early 2010s for which we have data, a young gay man in Toronto has about 30% odds of becoming HIV+ in his lifetime.
Wide eyes. Disbelief. That can't possibly be right. With all the people I have watched become HIV+ over the years, it is of course very believable to me. But the data from PHAC is reliable enough, and it speaks for itself. I shouldn't need to make it believable. But of course people are not emotionless abstract rational machines, and that's why I'm doing these sort of talks rather than emailing out memos with charts.
(The good news at least is those numbers are almost certainly coming down with new medical interventions like PrEP, earlier treatment and routine testing, which are my main points these days. I might actually get to be happy with the numbers in the national HIV tracking data when it's compiled for 2021.)
Someone wants to disagree with whatever nonsense the hivemind is raving about in the moment, but in order to do so they have to prostrate themselves and make it clear whose side they're on before they make their (often very valid) point.
e.g. "I hate Trump just has much as the rest of you but..." or "Look we need to be super supportive of X group and my dad is actually X but..."
No, I don't think so. It certainly wasn't a thing that I was aware of prior to roughly two years ago. Maybe it's "normal" now but that's probably because certain people made you show your identity card in order to dissent.
I've noticed this trend where people started to accuse each other of psychological trickery a lot. I think it descends as a "defense" from that. I was never really sure of how many psychological games were really being played and how much people just reached for the terms to use as dismissal from criticism.
That definitely happens, but sometimes the motivation is a bit more nuanced than just crawling to the mob. With everything so tribalised, and most people unwilling to stick their neck out and call their ingroup on its bullshit, we end up in situations where anyone expressing a dissenting opinion is quite likely to be an extremist of some kind -- or at least solidly on the 'other side' -- because they are the ones most likely to be motivated to speak up.
So if I preface an opinion with 'X, but', it may not be all about begging for the right to dissent; I may have good reason to think that, without the preface, what I say will signal some beliefs or values that I don't hold. If those things are genuinely hurtful to a vulnerable group, or simply reprehensible to me, then I have good reason to disavow them, regardless of whether I need to do so in order to be heard.
Yeah, but isn't that the same thing, said in a different way?
If I'm hyper-paranoid about my statement signaling beliefs I don't hold, isn't that just an indication that people are trying to assume too much based on that "signaling"?
> Yeah, but isn't that the same thing, said in a different way?
Sort of, and it's definitely part of the same dynamic. The differences, or at least the points I wanted to emphasise, are:
- I thought you were focusing on people's need to signal their in-group membership and general conformity (sometimes sincerely, sometimes not) so that they might be listened to and not shunned. I was pointing out that the motivation for the caveats can have a less cynical/craven strand: the simple desire to clearly communicate one's true values and beliefs.
- We might be collectively reinforcing this state of affairs without individually doing anything irrational. You say 'people are trying to assume too much based on that "signaling"' -- but given the equilibrium we're currently in, if someone expresses unpopular opinion X on hot-button topic Y in context Z without any caveats, I may be quite right to suspect that their real views are even more extreme, and/or that they come as part of a broader ideological package. If that's not the case, and the person wants to express their actual unpopular opinions without appearing to hint at the other ones, they may be right to add the tortuous preface. If they do so, the strength of the implicit signal sent by those who don't add the caveats increases, and the cycle continues; none of us can unilaterally break it without (on the receiving end) wilfully ignoring implicit meaning, or (on the sending end) risking being completely misunderstood.
edit: also, I don't know if you were implying this is a notably modern/progressive thing, but I think the basic dynamic is pretty universal. Definitely right now in the circles I live in, I'd mostly be afraid of signalling right-wing stuff. And the whole thing does seem to have increased in intensity over the last decade or so. But I see people in the various right-wing tribes being just as conformist, and I don't think it's really anything new. I'm confident that people arguing for less conservative interpretations of the Bible 20/50/100/1000 years ago were very careful to signal that they were genuine pious Christians.
(I don't like this dynamic, by the way. I'm a bit of a literalist, I like to make clean logical distinctions and evaluate each idea on its own merits, and I'm not very comfortable with the world of social signalling and game-playing we all seem to be trapped in. But it's completely pervasive (not only in political contexts) and I don't think people are wrong to read and react to the signals, even though they sometimes do it badly.)
I guess my perspective on this is slightly more permissive, in that I don't actually care what your underlying beliefs are as long as the point you are making is a coherent / valid one.
It shouldn't matter if you are pro-Trump if a bunch of people are being anti-Trump in a wildly over-the-top way and you want to point that out. Or vice versa – if you're surrounded by Trump loyalists and want to point out that something he did you disagree with, you shouldn't have to say "I love Trump but...", you should just be able to say "This is dumb, he shouldn't have done this".
The problem is that we've polarized everything to the point where this isn't very feasible.
> I don't actually care what your underlying beliefs are as long as the point you are making is a coherent / valid one
I half agree, but for me it depends on the situation. If the point is purely logical or empirical, and a fully detailed argument is made or watertight evidence presented, then the speaker's other beliefs and values are irrelevant. But often things are a bit fuzzier, and it makes sense to take the speaker's identity and character into account when making a snap judgment on how seriously to take them. And there are social reasons to care as well; conversation usually isn't just about truth-seeking. Even if people would take my arguments equally seriously regardless, I would prefer not to imply alignment with a set of values I don't actually hold.
> But often things are a bit fuzzier, and it makes sense to take the speaker's identity and character into account when making a snap judgment on how seriously to take them.
In all honesty I think this mindset is precisely why we've ended up in this massively polarized situation. When you "take the speaker's identity and character into account", you're obviously ("you" here being people in general not you in particular) to lend more credence to someone who's priors match your own. In other words, you give the benefit of the doubt to people like you, and interpret more uncharitably the words of someone who you think isn't like you. This creates a destructive cycle where everything eventually devolves into an echo chamber, increasing polarization and creating more echo chambers.
That's why I like how one of the principles behind Hacker News is to employ the "principle of charity" – try to interpret people's words in the best possible light, regardless of their priors or your own.
It absolutely can (and often does) lead to a cycle of reinforcing one's own biases. But I'm not convinced it would be either possible or desirable to completely avoid it. You simply can't thoroughly evaluate every claim you hear, or independently fill every gap in every apparently cogent but not absolutely watertight argument, or determine exactly how cherry-picked the evidence being presented to you is. You can't even pay full attention to more than a fraction of the ideas you encounter. At some point you've got to make judgments about the credibility of the speaker, the biases and incentives that might cause them to make mistakes or mislead you, the fundamental moral disagreements that might render your opinions on certain issues mutually irrelevant. If you're not doing it consciously I strongly suspect you are doing it unconsciously.
I agree wholeheartedly that the problem is information overload, but I disagree on the solution.
If you don't have the bandwidth to process all the arguments you're receiving... receive fewer arguments. Get involved in fewer shitposting threads on the internet. Have fewer arguments about politics at work. The solution is not to assume / reduce / summarize until the arguments become tidy little things you can stick in boxes, it is to just reduce your workload so that you can give the arguments you care most about the attention they deserve.
You must be filtering by speaker at some level and in some contexts, though, right? I assume you have opinions on e.g. scientific topics that you don't understand in depth. The only way I know to form those opinions is by doing my best to work out who to (provisionally, partially) trust.
Likewise, you talk about devoting your attention to the most important arguments -- but how do you decide which arguments deserve that attention? You can't be doing that 100% independently, you must at some point be allowing other people to raise issues to your attention, and to shift your priors a bit by virtue of the credibility they have earned via their track record (of being right, of being honest, of caring about things you care about).
The subtext of this entire conversation is that you'll never be able to talk "freely" in front of subordinates, so you need to either pine for yesteryear or take another look at your power dynamics.
> people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy
This supposed hierarchy of oppression, based on identity characteristics such as race, gender and sexuality, really is the biggest scam going.
Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be explained by wealth disparities, corruption, and abuse of power. Yet, identarians insist on shoehorning everything into their flawed worldview.
The Black Lives Matter movement was a telling example of this - police brutality is indeed an ongoing problem in society, but it doesn't just apply to black people. It's anyone the police feel they can get away with abusing. Just look at how they treat homeless people, drug addicts, and so on, regardless of race.
Another is celebrating people as tokens regardless of their actions. First mixed-race female Vice President of the USA - okay, but what sort of shitty role model is this? Rather reminds me of: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Co90umqUsAAdgQI?format=jpg
We would all do well to be critical of how identity politics is being used to mask the real root causes of oppression in our society. The so-called left wing of politics is the worst for this too, and I say this as a life-long leftist. Why make everything about identity; where has the traditional focus on class gone?
none of the people founding startups in Silicon Valley are oppressed by any reasonable understanding that concept
I’ve never understood why they are so desperate to be oppressed that they have to invent new categories to be part of then claim to be oppressed when literally no one even knows what they are.
> Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be explained by wealth disparities
I recently talked to a mom who visited her adult foster daughter with a different skin tone. Her daughter reminded her to make sure she doesn't forget her ID in the hotel.
The mom was confused. They were just going to take a walk in Munich. Why would she need an ID? She never has an ID on her when she goes for a walk.
The daughter said, because the police, they stop you and ask to see your ID!
Mom couldn't believe it that the police was so different in Munich. Then it dawned on her. Foster daughter had brown skin, so she was randomly stopped by police and asked for ID because she looks like an immigrant.
Mom was white and has never ever been stopped by police before.
The police absolutely treat people different because of race.
ok but the parent comment was discussing policing and blackness in America, I don't agree with their conclusions but at any rate comparing that situation to policing in Munich doesn't really make much sense.
I think the point is that white people are likely to lack this lived experience. If there's a massive difference in opinion about racism in the country between white and black Americans, that difference of opinion may be due to factors that white people can't easily see.
I certainly believe that American police and the American justice system treat black people worse than it treats white people, although the parent commenter was also correct that they hurt whomever they feel they have the power to hurt in my experience they still treat black people worse, all that clarified although I expected it should have been clear from my previous comment that still does not make anyone's experience of policing in Munich relevant (assuming it is Munich, Germany we're talking about)
Black Lives Matter protests were in several European cities as well. Not as big as in the US, of course. But racist police are a world wide problem, it's not something limited to the US.
in my experience while Europe and the U.S have similar problems things play out quite differently in each, and it is often useless to make a comparison for this reason.
I've also seen a free Leonard Peltier protest march in Copenhagen, but I'm not sure that the state of Native American rights in Denmark and the U.S is somehow comparable.
> Foster daughter had brown skin, so she was randomly stopped by police and asked for ID because she looks like an immigrant.
This conclusion isn't quite there.
In China, foreigners are notionally required to carry their passport with them. I have never actually obeyed that, because it is a very bad idea. And it's never mattered, because although I'm obligated to produce it on demand, that demand has never been made.
It's not because I blend in. Any idiot can see that I'm not Chinese. "Looking like an immigrant" is not sufficient to be stopped by the police.
> It's anyone the police feel they can get away with abusing.
And a core premise of the Black Lives Matter movement is that Black people are generally an easier target that the police can get away with abusing, and police know this. Police can also typically identify Black people easily on sight, putting them at greater risk. Class is a valuable lens through which to view systems of oppression, but we shouldn't neglect these other dimensions of race, gender, etc... that are clearly a part of our society.
> The Black Lives Matter movement was a telling example of this - police brutality is indeed an ongoing problem in society, but it doesn't just apply to black people. It's anyone the police feel they can get away with abusing. Just look at how they treat homeless people, drug addicts, and so on, regardless of race.
And if you actually stuck around in leftist circles you would see how the "indentarians" as you so called them are in opposition to those, too.
> First mixed-race female Vice President of the USA - okay, but what sort of shitty role model is this?
Everyone I know in identity politics circles was critical of her too! Indeed!
I think you've essentially misunderstood why there was a push against solely class-based analysis, and why identity-specific systemic oppression was introduced to this concept -- the two are not in opposition. The reason it was brought in was because measures to deconstruct and eliminate class-based oppression, often kept systemic inequality between identity.
For example, the push to eliminate sexism has for the most part only advantaged white women (You'll have to trust me on the proof for this since I'm writing this while on the go -- however look up books like Carceral Capitalism and "Why I Don't Talk To White People About Race" for examples). The introduction of how your identity impacts how class boundaries affect you was necessary to better understand the dynamics and better shed and cast off systems of oppression
I can see your comment in the context of democratic party circles, but not leftist circles, at least in the US. I have difficulty placing it in the leftist circles I run in, which generally view politics in the US as consisting of a center/far right party (democrats) and reactionary fascists (republicans).
> Everyone I know in identity politics circles was critical of her too! Indeed!
I'm quite skeptical of this claim. For the most part the people pushing race and gender identity narratives in the US had at best mild criticism of Ms. Harris, and were mainly focused on her multi-racial identity and its historical significance. Almost as if her terrible politics simply didn't matter because of her identity.
> I have difficulty placing it in the leftist circles I run in, which generally view politics in the US as consisting of a center/far right party (democrats) and reactionary fascists (republicans).
The same view shared by myself and my fellow 'intersectional-ists'. I haven't heard of anyone aside from 'centrists' and fascists that adopt a different viewpoint? Perhaps there is a subset of fools on breadtube or facebook, sure, but they are vastly outnumbered.
> Almost as if her terrible politics simply didn't matter because of her identity.
Well then your lenses are vastly, vastly different to mine, and do not match up with both those in modern academic circles (Like, literally just read any new literature covering intersectionality and the introduction of it to communism), those on the ground in protests, and those present in progressive/queer groups (like me). It's worth noting that at the moment there is a huge divide between "progressive" communists, and, well, "regressive" communists (For want of better terms). From what I observed from stalking facebook commie groups, most of the latter are still stuck with 100 year old debates -- and while they have a huge amount of theoretical knowledge, they have no practical contributions to any revolutionary movements thusfar. For example, most of the discussion I observed was focused on rehabilitating Stalin's image, whereas most of the 'on the ground' antifacist-aligned folks are of the mind that that isn't really something modern communism should waste it's time on.
I would suggest at least reading some modern intersectional writing, if only to better understand the thing you're arguing against. The basic focus of intersectionality and how the systemic abuse created by late-stage capitalism impacts specific groups differently (The 'intersection' of those groups and the oppression they face), and how movements (even revolutionary) to improve conditions have backfired have been around for at least 60 years if Tony Cliff's 1978 writing "Why Socialists Should Support Gays" (https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1978/08/gays.ht...) is anything to go by -- at least if you will give me the small leeway of temporarily ignoring how controversial Tony Cliff is as a figure in Communism.
If you are in search of one of the progressive communities I talk of, Something Awful has recently (last 5ish years) turned into a very leftist-heavy place, with frequent debate about neoliberalism, capitalism, etc. You will be able to ask questions there and receive answers and engage in productive discussion.
Are both good places to talk about this with progressive, mostly-intersectional communists. Just take note a lot of the thread titles are in jest, you should navigate to the last five pages and pick up context as you go (A lot of the threads have been running since 2016!) and espousing neoliberalism in an annoying way is a swift path to a probation :)
Communism isn't a synonym for leftism. There is plenty of debate regarding the merits of intersectionalism. I wouldn't call it rigorous or academic, as neither intersectionalists nor many of the people who find it objectionable are particularly analytical, and their resistance to empirical methods isn't particularly inspiring.
Suffice it to say that I don't think you're on as solid intellectual footing as you think you are.
I have stairs in my house, too, by the way. SA has always had a pseudo-leftist bent, even when we were passing around videos of 9/11 set to the tune of Benny Hill. I have a few photoshop friday entries, in fact, if that's still a thing. D&D is the self-absorbed, ego-driven SA analog of stoners marveling over their own hands at 1am at the local Denny's. No thanks.
Consider that it's common for anyone who suggests the impoverished of any race are more susceptible to police violence to be quickly and roundly piled on for trying to erase race or for supposedly engaging in “pity poor whites” rhetoric. It doesn’t even matter if “and impoverished black people even more so” is included. The fact that one isn’t solely focused on the racial minority in this context is grounds enough for social scorn and ridicule.
There is a very real problem with “oppression olympics” centered on racial identity, in this country.
> The impoverished of any race are more susceptible to police violence, and impoverished Black people even more so
is true. But the statement
> Black people of all economic classes are more susceptible to police violence
is also true. There is no logical contradiction between the two. Therefore, when someone responds to the second statement with the first, their response carries the connotation that the first statement is somehow "more true". It implicitly minimizes the struggle of Black people.
Not everyone who makes the first statement in response to the second intends minimize the struggle of Black people, but I think in the majority of cases that is exactly what they intend to do.
It's not even about making the statement in response, as you suggest.
There is no contradiction between the two, but only one of them is considered socially acceptable in certain circles, these days, in any context. That's problematic.
Because that catchphrase started in reaction to Black Lives Matter, and is used largely to signal opposition to the goal of constraining police actions. If people were holding All Lives Matter protests in opposition to police violence of all kinds, I doubt they'd get much flak; instead, they're protesting the idea that black lives matter.
Just because you say it means something to those people, doesn’t mean it means that to them. You don’t get to choose the hidden meaning behind other peoples words, and you’re clearly giving them the least charitable interpretation
The fact that so many large corporations are eager to throw money at BLM, change their corporate logos to black, etc. while doing nothing tangible to address the real issues, proves to me that the current identity politics narrative is serving the elite very well.
> while doing nothing tangible to address the real issues
Doing things to solve the real issues would run into difficult real-world problems both symbolic and logistical/physical. Overcoming them require having conversations where people
1. Do creative problem-solving
2. Say “well, actually...” about practical implementation details.
3. Speak honestly about the real difficulties and risks of unintended consequences.
4. Admit to failure and error and even inattention.
All of which is blocked by similar social dynamics to the ones discussed in the article.
"Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be explained by wealth disparities, corruption, and abuse of power. ... The Black Lives Matter movement was a telling example of this - police brutality is indeed an ongoing problem in society, but it doesn't just apply to black people. It's anyone the police feel they can get away with abusing. Just look at how they treat homeless people, drug addicts, and so on, regardless of race."
You're not wrong about that. But many people face further oppression based on their race, gender, and sexuality, in addition to wealth and class.
I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes always lead to overshoot.
I also think the amount of overshoot is proportional to the amount of sexism that was present in a society thirty years ago. I believe Northern Europe has been trending slowly towards gender equality since the 90s, and thus the amount of overshoot here is much less from the recent rapid changes like #meetoo.
Also our kids roam around the neighbourhood freely. We're thinking of giving our 9-year-old a cellphone soon, for now she just has an analog watch and we agree on what time she has to be home by.
If you look at statistics, the rate of women murdered per capita, and the rate of women who experience sexualized violence per capita, are around 5x higher in the US than in Northern Europe. The murder rate here for children (excluding by their own parents) is below 1 per million children per year.
We're definitely not perfect, we have a long way to go still, but we are starting from a more equal place if you look at the status pre-2017.
There's no such thing as overcorrection when _any_ correction in the direction we're seeing on display in this article is a net negative for literally everyone involved. Women get worse advice, men tip-toe around women, and society loses out on potentially valuable investments.
I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes always lead to overshoot.
"Underdamped system" is very apt here. There are some positive feedback factors which exacerbate the situation in the "underdamped system." If you give over power to a mob, then the very principles which act as damping can be completely abandoned. Things like "innocent until proven guilty," and the valuing of evidence.
The answer to unchecked, abused, one-sided power is not more unchecked, one-sided power with the vector rotated 180 degrees. That's just welcoming more dysfunction and abuse.
we are starting from a more equal place if you look at the status pre-2017
We are starting from a place where typical middle-school, high school, and college kids are likely to answer with expletives towards the principles mentioned above -- depending on the context in which you ask their opinion.
EDIT: Way back when, when I was watching that Vice report about the Evergreen State College activists, and one of them said, "...then f#ck your Free Speech!" I became very afraid that our society was in for a world of hurt. I'm pretty sure Gandhi and MLK were for Free Speech and the other principles mentioned above.
> I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes always lead to overshoot.
No I don't think it's this. I think it's the advent of the internet. The internet changed everything. What you will find is that the internet is responsible for making everything look like an "overshoot."
I realize some of you may not remember life before the internet but before the internet was around these "outrages" were nowhere to be found.
At that time the abolishing of Racial Segregation was already old news and happened at least 5-6 decades before the internet. If this was an overshoot you would think the overshoot would've happened after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and not on some random time period 60 years later when the internet just happens to be 2 decades old.
>I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes always lead to overshoot.
this is the way
>Hegelian dialectic, usually presented in a threefold manner, was stated by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus[27] as comprising three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, giving rise to its reaction; an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis; and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis.
30 years ago the feminist and equality movement was very different from today's view, and not all for the worse. A lot of focus was then to eliminate gender in the ways people were treated, with the more extreme parts of the movement wanting to eliminate gender roles all together. Gender segregation in Northern Europe held the best numbers 30-40 years ago, and has only gotten worse since with pretty large strides. Gender segregation today is more like the 1920 than the 1990's.
women murdered per capita has indeed gone down, but so have the general murder rate. Men are still murdered far more often than women, and reached the highest ratio ever measured in the last summery by the government agency BRÅ, with around 77% to 23%. I would be careful to attribute such numbers to gender equality, especially since the trend seems to continue upwards.
The statistics for assault and sexual assault has similar complexity. The combined risk of being assaulted or sexual assaulted has been historically similar for both women and men, with assault being more common for men and sexual assault for women. Between 2012 and 2018 there were a major increase in sexual assault, and especially rape after 2015. The reason for this can't really be discussed since it involve an other political hot topic.
It still might be a rapid change that is causing people to overshoot, but it is likely a much harder token to measure. Changes in political power.
Women have for years had the same fear of men. Most men, good people. Or at least not criminally bad. But some are. But the social stigma of women going out alone at night, fear of first dates etc. has permeated the social fabric of how women have to treat men on their day to day. I've yet to encounter a woman who has gone from internalizing this aspect of society to dropping their priors and living care free without fear of men they don't know / met for the first time.
They have had decades, minimum, of this just being how things are. And things have not found a way to change to a more easy going society. If anything things have just hardened up as information and media have become more prevalent. In comparison, powerful people fearing being potentially (mis)interpreted not being worth the risk to their entire career is a relatively new phenomenon. I wager that the OP of this article doesn't have a solution to the problem of trust by investors, because women have yet to discover the solution to their own generalized mistrust of men outside their direct social circle despite how long that situation has gone on for.
Until the risk / reward dynamic changes (and I do not see how it could without making people less accountable), I fully anticipate that this self censorship in society will not only just continue, but will yet increase further in an information society where powerful people can be made accountable by the public as stories of people being held to account to their actions, regardless of whether those actions were deliberate, accidental or misunderstandings.
>Women have for years had the same fear of men. Most men, good people. Or at least not criminally bad. But some are. But the social stigma of women going out alone at night, fear of first dates etc. has permeated the social fabric of how women have to treat men on their day to day. I've yet to encounter a woman who has gone from internalizing this aspect of society to dropping their priors and living care free without fear of men they don't know / met for the first time.
Before you get outraged I just want to caveat this by saying that what I'm about to say is just controversial and anecdotal. If you share a different opinion than fine, this is just my opinion.
The general fear women have of men that permeates all of their behavior is more of a biologically programmed fear than it is a an environmentally programmed one. What makes me say this? Because, anecdotally, women have this fear even when there is ZERO prior trauma. Although they can train this fear away, practically all women are naturally more guarded when among unfamiliar men, even with No prior Trauma.
I've been been in tons of fists fights when I was a kid. There are many times where I've lost and was beaten until my face was a bloody mess by other dudes. This is 100x more trauma than an average woman will ever go through and even I don't live in fear of "men."
Now this is not scientific evidence but anecdotal evidence is not invalid. It's the only way to talk about such subjects short of doing a 10 year scientific study. So you may have a different experience and I respect that but I also respectfully ask anyone who replies not to start a gender flame war and get outraged at my viewpoint.
>They have had decades, minimum, of this just being how things are. And things have not found a way to change to a more easy going society. If anything things have just hardened up as information and media have become more prevalent. In comparison, powerful people fearing being potentially (mis)interpreted not being worth the risk to their entire career is a relatively new phenomenon. I wager that the OP of this article doesn't have a solution to the problem of trust by investors, because women have yet to discover the solution to their own generalized mistrust of men outside their direct social circle despite how long that situation has gone on for.
You used the word "decades," and this is what the wrong part of your statement. It is actually factually wrong and there is tons of anthropological research to back this up. The word you should have used was "centuries." Practically all of human civilization has been patriarchal. They have never identified in the history of archaeology and anthropology any human civilization where the dominant sex was not Men. This fact flies across time and across geographic boundaries of countless cultures. There is not a single exception. There are civilizations where women took on roles that are traditionally "male" but there has never been a civilization that has been consistently matriarchal. Thus from this perspective it is arguable that patriarchy could be biologically ingrained and that modern civilization is currently trending beyond out biological imperative.
The additional rights afforded by women today is largely a modern and very unique phenomenon. According to the current school of thought in academia much of it is attributed to changes in technology. Sewage, tampons, etc.
I caveated decades with "at least", not because I think that things were going swimmingly in the 1800s or earlier but more around when women attained more freedom in society to associate with who they wish by their choice than in the authoritarian sense of the older patriarchal societies. I'm referring to the choice aspect of ones own actions, not just the historical context.
I do not subscribe to the belief that patriarchy is biological because there is numerous empirical examples of historical matriarchal societies in places such as South America, Asia, Native American Hopi tribe, Celtic society, Germany and Estonia including in the recorded history of my own non-American society.
>I caveated decades with "at least", not because I think that things were going swimmingly in the 1800s or earlier but more around when women attained more freedom in society to associate with who they wish by their choice than in the authoritarian sense of the older patriarchal societies.
Yes but it's like saying humans live for at least one minute which is true but misleading because humans live for about 80 years. Huge timescale issue that exists despite your caveat.
Your second opinion which I respect is not one shared by experts who study gender roles in anthropology. They cite that the reason why women have more power in modern society is not one made by choice but one made by technology. Women today have greater freedom in our societies because they are no longer held back biological weaknesses such as menstruation as modern technology helps assist them in this endeavor. Additionally, modern society is no longer centered around manual labor so women can gain power without resorting to physical strength.
Keep in mind, this is not MY opinion. This is the opinion of the scientific world that exists outside of both the gender cancel culture agenda or the male dominated mens rights activists.
>I do not subscribe to the belief that patriarchy is biological because there is numerous empirical examples of historical matriarchal societies in places such as South America, Asia, Native American Hopi tribe, Celtic society, Germany and Estonia including in the recorded history of my own non-American society.
You can choose what belief you wish to subscribe to, and I respect your choice. However facts are facts:
Among anthropologists of science within academia there is no question all societies have been patriarchal including the one we live in right now. I am well versed in the anthropological studies on this, very very well versed. Source:
Scroll to "History and distribution" and read the following quote:
"Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal.[59][60][61] According to J. M. Adovasio, Olga Soffer, and Jake Page, no true matriarchy is known actually to have existed.[55] Anthropologist Joan Bamberger argued that the historical record contains no primary sources on any society in which women dominated.[62] Anthropologist Donald Brown's list of human cultural universals (viz., features shared by nearly all current human societies) includes men being the "dominant element" in public political affairs,[63] which he asserts is the contemporary opinion of mainstream anthropology.[64] There are some disagreements and possible exceptions. A belief that women's rule preceded men's rule was, according to Haviland, "held by many nineteenth-century intellectuals".[5] The hypothesis survived into the 20th century and was notably advanced in the context of feminism and especially second-wave feminism, but the hypothesis is mostly discredited today, most experts saying that it was never true.[64]"
I took anthropological studies in UCLA and even the female teacher there outright told the classroom that there are no examples of true matriarchal societies. Also be careful about studies promoted by the feminist agenda as cited by the section above, don't let those articles (they are all over google) lead you astray.
There is a lot of false misguided information on the internet about this topic but if you dig deeply or actually study this topic (as I did) in academia you will find the cold hard truth.
Either way you can still subscribe to your belief despite what the scientific literature has found. Science is not always correct, but be aware about whether or not you're subscribing to that belief because of evidence or because of desire.
There is another possible source of fear - in addition to biology and trauma, there is also observation together with reason. Even if one has zero prior trauma, it's not hard for one to realize that men are on average an order of magnitude more violent than women are.
My own experiences with fighting have not given me a fear of men in general, but they have certainly contributed to a caution that I have around certain types of men - in particular, around men who have either an animalistic concern with territoriality and status, a socioeconomic desperation that makes them willing to rob outsiders, or both. I try to steer clear not only of men of this type but also of entire demographics and parts of the world in which they are common.
>There is another possible source of fear - in addition to biology and trauma, there is also observation together with reason. Even if one has zero prior trauma, it's not hard for one to realize that men are on average an order of magnitude more violent than women are.
This is sort of true. I'll talk about the aspect that is true. What is true is that men are an order of magnitude stronger than women on average. What isn't true is the violence part. Women are actually more violent then men and the reasoning is simple.
It's because men are stronger will do more damage if they get violent so men have a tendency to hold back. I don't know if you dealt with women a lot socially, but when women get frustrated they're more likely to pound you or push you with their pathetic little fists. They often have much less ability to control themselves.
The caveat here is that when it comes to actual damage men do far more greater damage, meaning that when a man actually does decide to lash out at a woman the damage is far greater and the crime far more severe. Outside of specific studies the severe crimes are the only ones that are reported. However, make no mistake, within studies that account for this bias, the numbers show women are more likely to be violent. In fact even those "territorial" men you talk about actually literally hold back when there's a woman around. There is no equal treatment here.
>My own experiences with fighting have not given me a fear of men in general, but they have certainly contributed to a caution that I have around certain types of men - in particular, around men who have either an animalistic concern with territoriality and status, a socioeconomic desperation that makes them willing to rob outsiders, or both. I try to steer clear not only of men of this type but also of entire demographics and parts of the world in which they are common.
Have you had much encounters with women? Even in dating and going to the club practically every aspect of their lives is centered around safety and caution. They rarely go out alone. Always with another man friend or with other groups of women (three at least) and when in bars or clubs even women who are strangers are always watching each others backs.
This is despite the very true fact that Men are actually much more likely to be the target of violence from other drunk men then women are when going to bars or clubs. The fear women have is biological and inbuilt as valid defenses for the more savage hunter and gatherer era. It is currently an outmoded standard of behavior that is no longer as relevant in modern society. But biology is biology and we are slaves to our biology.
Additionally it could be that women have these defenses because the consequences are much more severe. While a man is more likely to suffer from a violent attack from other men and women then a woman herself would, if a woman should get unlucky enough to suffer from an attack the consequences are extreme. This would be an argument in favor of your point of view, but still in support of the fact that women behave this way because of biology not reasoning. The biology is just an "reasonable" evolutionary response to the environmental pressure.
I don't blame the media for this. The media just magnifies a very real and sizable aspect of our culture that already exists.
Just like how these people are seeking someone to blame, you are seeking the same when you blame the media. It's not just the media, what's going on here is something we're all responsible for.
But the distortion existed in society in the first place. The main stream media reports what people what to hear because it's good for business. The root of the problem is us.
The phenomenon isn't something created by the media and deployed into society. The origins of cancel culture and most of this outrage come from extremist leftist elements from students in college campuses. The media just made the spreading of this phenomenon faster.
You can't really blame social media either. Because we control what goes onto social media. We're responsible for the news on our social feeds.
Either a person accepts extreme, but very unlikely, risk by exercising perfect candor with everyone or they decide to clam up around people lower on the 'oppression hierarchy' which costs them almost nothing to do.
Why would any rational actor not choose option B unless they're getting some reward great enough to offset the risk of option A?
There's a weird inversion of the Thermocline happening in the past few years, with "activists." Social Media can so amplify the voices of "activists," that they gain power which people are afraid to speak out against. Especially if the power is based on mob mentality. Especially if power is given over to accusation without evidence. (This is borne out by history. McCarthy, for example.) So when certain people go too far -- and given how power corrupts, it's inevitable that sudden onsets of power will corrupt -- people who should be saying "wait a minute" are saying nothing.
All power is fleeting.
All power is contextual.
Any one who tries to deny these truths, is attempting some manner of deception to further their own power at someone else's expense.
Imagine a woman were to say, if we don't put an end to casual sexism, the end result we're heading for is that men will take any woman they see, kidnap her, and lock her in a dungeon.
A much more realistic and likely outcome, and a far less hysterical perspective than yours, is that the needle was way too far one way, now people are learning to cope with it shifting, and if we try to be more empathetic, perhaps getting help when we need to, we can shift it to a better place than it was before.
How do I know this? Because identical dynamics play over and over, change is scary, even if it is for the better, and people have opposed it on similar grounds -- it would lead to absurdities and worst outcomes for everyone involved -- since time immemorial. For example, see some arguments against women suffrage from just over a hundred years ago [1]:
> Because the acquirement of the Parliamentary vote would logically involve admission to Parliament itself, and to all Government offices. It is scarcely possible to imagine a woman being Minister for War, and yet the principles of the Suffragettes involve that and many similar absurdities.
> Because Woman Suffrage is based on the idea of the equality of the sexes, and tends to establish those competitive relations which will destroy chivalrous consideration.
And, of course, women do not want the vote [2]
The belief that we can -- and must -- work tirelessly change the world by, say, allowing humans to fly and even reach other planets, but when it comes to how people should speak to one another, well, that's too difficult to change, there's no point in trying, and if we try then the outcome will obviously be bad, just seems so bizarre.
> men will take any woman they see, kidnap her, and lock her in a dungeon.
> And, of course, women do not want the vote
Please keep this sort of flamebait out of your HN posts. It's guaranteed to make everything worse, and you can make your substantive points without it.
The second was a quote from numerous reasoned arguments (which I linked to) posted in similar forums in the ear 20th century. Anyway, this thread is so terrifying (and brings back bad memories from my time in SV) that the natural reaction should be to scream in horror and not make any "substantive points." I am even more worried and, frankly, hurt that you don't see that. The most I could manage is try to hold a mirror up so that some people might see what they sound like to others.
Usually when people describe their internet comments with phrases like "hold up a mirror" they're coming across as far more aggressive than they think they are. Everyone always feels like they're just playing defense while the others are committing outrages.
As for how shitty this thread is, I've spent the last several hours posting dozens of comments, feebly trying to do something about that. All I'm asking you (and others) is not to make it worse yet. Gratuitous provocation takes discussion straight to failure modes. We're all worse off if that happens.
How that's a reason not to make substantive points, or what it has to do with SV, I'm not following. The vast majority of HN is far away from SV, all over the world, and I've never seen a correlation between posts being shitty and posts being from SV. On the present topic there is probably a mild negative correlation, just because people in SV have been through so many iterations of this discussion, for so many more years than most places, that they're less likely to get activated with naive outrage.
I don't think that trying to appear less aggressive is the correct ethical response to the putrid horror show unfolding here. Aiming for a civil discussion of "the woman problem" is not the right goal here. The correct answer to how should we best debate the question, But What Shall We Do About the Women? is not to have such a discussion at all. Just the fact that how to treat women is even considered an appropriate topic for discussion is enough to deter any human that isn't on the autistic spectrum from approaching this community, and the industry sector it represents. If the dehumanising, humiliating monstrosity of this "discussion" is hard to see, try replacing "women" on this page with "Irish" or "Jews."
I'm just asking you not to omit gratuitous flamebait like "men will take any woman they see, kidnap her, and lock her in a dungeon" and "women do not want the vote" from your HN comments. It's obviously against the site guidelines, and pouring kerosene on flames is arson even if the building was already on fire.
People who feel strongly on topics routinely use language like "putrid horror show" to justify their own breaking of the site guidelines and making a discussion even worse than it already is. This sort of "why bother" / "fuck it" attitude is a big part of why things are so bad to begin with; it leads people to create the situation they deplore. No one wants to look at the "putridity" of their own contributions—the problem is always caused by other, never by self.
The only solution I can see to this is to prioritize taking care of the commons, regardless of how bad things are or you feel they are.
I don't think you understand the seriousness of what's unfolding here, and the level of virulent dehumanisation expressed. There is no right way to discuss "The Woman Question" any more than there is a right way to discuss "The Jewish Question." The tone of discussion is insignificant in comparison to conducting it in the first place.
Where you get these thoughts that you imagine moderators think, I don't know, but I don't recognize any of them. I don't give a shit about tone. I'm simply trying to support an internet forum in not going to hell and asking you not to make that job harder.
What I hear you saying is that it's already gone to hell, so it doesn't matter what you do. Actually it matters a lot what you do. Every user here needs to abide by the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Bringing up "Jewish Question" is singularly unhelpful and more gratuitous provocation. It seems to me that you're the main person framing this thread as "Woman Question" to begin with, then using that to justify pouring kerosene of your own. That's not cool.
What I've noticed is that users with strong ideological passions tend to describe as "putrid" and "cesspool" and so on, any discussion in which their own ideology isn't imposed as the dominant one. That's understandable, but it's not a realistic demand. HN is a large forum which is as divided on ideological topics as any other large population sample—moreover this population sample is all over the world, which unfortunately makes people far more prone to interpret others' statements as "putrid" without it even dawning on anyone that that's a factor.
Much as I might wish it, we don't have the power to change how divided this community is. All we can do is look for ways to nudge users into having thoughtful discussion despite divisions. Everyone has a different sense of what that might look like, and we can talk about how to do that, but we don't have the power to make people agree.
There is a great moderation tool for such a discussion: not to have it. I think my framing is helpful, because clearly you're not seeing what I'm seeing. Here are three comments I picked from the top five at the moment (so, almost at random); there are far worse ones:
> As an investor, of course I clam up. I spend my days looking at the world in terms of risk-adjusted returns and cost benefit analyses, so why would I take a human capital risk? My entire business is based on my reputation and I've seen what happens to the people who get comments like "not the best with Jews at conferences" ... I can count on two hands the number of Jews I would feel comfortable giving the exact same feedback to as I would a non-Jew.
> I appreciate the effort to think of a better word than antisemitism. My question is, is this even antisemitism at all? How many people can get publicly denounced as “antisemites” and have their life ruined because they didn’t speak carefully enough, before it is simply just “smart” rather than “antisemitic” to be extra careful with how you speak to Jews.
> Imagine what it's like being the intended target and not just "collateral damage". It's not a problem that non-Jews are nervous to be candid but it's a problem that Jews are feeling the secondary effects of that?
I'm overwhelmed by the quantity of comments here. I don't have a chance of even seeing them all, let alone read them all, let alone patiently and painstakingly moderate them all. One reason for that (today) is that I've been writing long, careful replies to you in the hope of explaining the kind of comments we're looking for here and why we need you to eschew gratutitous provocation.
In response, you made a bunch of quotes in which you replaced the word "women" with "Jews". I just spent several minutes trying to track down those comments before I realized that you were pulling that trick. I'm really shocked that you would stoop to that.
The flamewar trope "I'm going to replace $group1 with $group2 just to show how $xist your comment is" is one of the most common. Usually it's people on the other ideological side who do that, and often garden-variety trolls. It is a strong marker of cheap flamewar and a good example of how the ideological enemies who perpetuate these flamewars actually resemble each other more than they do anyone else.
Maybe, but right now I can't think of another way of showing how illegitimate it is to have a discussion over how best to treat a discriminated group of people, especially when when that group is so underrepresented on this forum. There is just no right way to have this discussion at all. If discussions on a tech forum look like they're minutes from a men's rights group meeting, then that's a huge problem.
If you can't think of another way than altering quotes for shock value, that may be because your view of the thread and the community is not actually accurate. I've looked again, and I don't think your description is fair. The OP seems to me legitimate; painful, but not gratuitous. As for the thread, many of the comments are thoughtful. I don't agree with or like all of them—or most of them, actually—but I think you're misassessing the amount of bad faith in the community. That's a big deal because, as I tried to explain above, it takes people to a why-bother/fuck-it place, from which they end up creating the very thing they were deploring.
It's unfortunately all too easy and common for people to mistake a divided community for a "putrid horror show", dominated by demons [1] or, as the internet likes to call them, "terrible persons", when in reality most people here just have different backgrounds and experiences from one another [2]. I'm not saying that's the only factor—anyone can scan my moderation comments in this thread to find examples to the contrary (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613942). But I still think the HN guidelines are right to say "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." ...and I think that if you took that guideline more to heart, you might see the bulk of the thread differently. (I don't mean the long tail of trolls and flames—those are always with us.)
Hang on, do you mean the comment that started this is 'painful but not gratuitous'? Because:
This is kind of the end result we're heading for, where you can only talk candidly with people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy.
Seems pretty clearly gratuitous flamebait. Oppression hierarchy? We're heading to where nobody can frankly speak to anyone? This is 'first they came', in different words and is equally cheap and dumb.
The people aren't monsters; it's the dynamics of such discussions -- an emergent property -- that breeds such results. My problem isn't bad faith of the participants; I'm sure people are authentic. It is that HN finds it appropriate to host and publicise a discussion in an overwhelmingly male forum on how to best treat women in the workplace (and not from the professional HR perspective). The very thing I was deploring in the first place is the thought that such a discussion in such a forum is ethically legitimate.
BTW, I am not talking about the actual article. It's fine. I'm merely talking about the ensuing "debate."
You need exactly 0 women in a discussion about how to treat women in the workplace to reach the right conclusion, it's ridiculous that you attribute having right perspective on things to sex.
You threat women exactly as everybody else. See? Wasn't that hard.
We've banned this account for trolling. Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with. Doing that will eventually get your main account banned as well.
There isn't enough information in your comment for me to understand, but it sounds like some sort of gotcha? If so, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. HN moderation practice has been thoroughly covered by the tens of thousands of posts we've made about it. There aren't any surprise revelations or factors that haven't been explained a zillion times.
> There is a great moderation tool for such a discussion: not to have it
Do you honestly think the situation improves if the discussion is censored here? Whether you like it or not these industry discussions, and much worse, are happening elsewhere and censoring relatively timid discussions like this only makes matters worse. There are 490 comments at the time of this post and I'd bet the vast majority of them are relatively benign.
Absolutely. Respectable media platforms and discussion forums have always "censored" some topics (if by that you mean that they've chosen to exercise their freedom of speech to choose what they deem worthy of publication); that's precisely the one thing that separates them from unrespectable ones. Right now there are a lot of discussions going on about blacks or Jews, but that doesn't mean a respectable forum should lend the subject legitimacy by hosting it.
To be fair, there are more people from UK and Eastern Europe (Russia, Romania, Poland, Ukraine) posting here than SV, probably because the majority of the software devs congregate in these countries.
However ineffectual it may feel at times, I and many others are grateful for the nuanced work you do here encouraging us all to maintain constructive, good-faith discourse. Thank you dang!
Who are “we”? Anglo-Saxons? Unite States Citizens? or even only a subset of the later? particularly those active in finance and other fields where a man's social conformance weighs more than his skills.
I can't say that I have ever in my life noticed much of the Anglo-Saxon gender, race, and other such politics in real life and I remain sceptical as to what extent it is actually true within Anglo-Saxon offices, for I find that all “sides” of the issue seem to offer very different, contradictory experiences, and mostly reads as a rather exagerated an implausible story of how bad it is for one's own side.
Though there might be a kernel of truth behind some of it, most of it reads as though the writers see boogymen, and unreasonable fear, and I will say that when actual hard statistics be available, they almost always paint a very difficult picture than what is complained about in all these “culture war” discussions, and that certainly goes for all sides.
One of my main concerns is that almost all legitimate discussion is now happening in private invite only communities because people are too risk averse to continue to chat on public sites that will be indexed forever in a culture where they can be cancelled for even a slightly uncouth opinion. Almost all of my consumption and contribution on the Internet is now in private communities that are quite strict about invites and the trend among my colleagues is similar.
When I was younger I learned so much and established many valuable relationships by having discussions on public services/websites. Many legends in the field were quite accessible on public sites and mailing lists. My life would be much worse if I hadn't had those experiences and it feels like a lot of younger people that don't have connections to the SV bubble are now going to miss out on similar experiences.
This isn't to say that we should be tolerant of everything but it definitely feels like we've swung too far in the opposite direction.
Not saying I do this, necessarily, but friends of mine who are active in policy circles write for various publications under pseudonyms now for this reason. The development of the idea happens in private group chats, where everyone is using their IRL name, but the publication happens under a pen name.
I really don't know if this is a positive change for how policy gets made, but it is happening actively right now.
I understand what you're getting at though. I just made a claim that people in policy circles are writing things under pseudonyms. You want evidence for this (justifiably), but this would require me to essentially out the pen names. Sorry, not going to happen.
Oh, so the pseudonyms appear to be real names, and are not known as pseudonyms? Or are they things like “Cicero.” I wasn’t looking for your contacts as much as I am trying to answer “Are pseudonymously written works more bold/risk-taking etc?”
What happens if someone Googles the pseudonym? Or tries to contact it? Do they use an anonymous email address or just not allow it?
Wasn't most "legitimate discussion" already happening in private already? This article is pointing out situations where even in private people might not want to give out candid feedback, which seems like a different concern that what you are saying.
I'm a pretty active person online and I genuinely do not understand your concern. If you want to say something controversial online, just do so anonymously like you are doing now. If you want to give somebody candid advice I'm not sure why you'd do that in public anyways.
My apologies, I should have made clear that my post wasn't directed at the article.
> Wasn't most "legitimate discussion" already happening in private already?
Probably, but I think there was still much more interesting discussion going on publicly in years past. It's anecdotal but I've definitely seen a huge spike in how many of my colleagues are retreating entirely to private communities and most of them never make public comments anymore. That's disappointing to me because I think there's a lot of value in having these discussions in the open with respected and accomplished names attached. It also gives a level of perceived accessibility that I think is important.
“but I think there was still much more interesting discussion going on publicly in years past.”
Really? Prior to anonymous Internet comments there were even fewer discussions. I think recent years is when we’ve finally began to understand how people really feel.
You are correct. I should have limited my statement to discussions between people using their real identities. I also think this is subjective depending on how much value you place on being able to identify the participants. For example, in language related discussions I think it's extremely valuable to have people like SPJ, Anders Hejlsberg, Andrei Alexandrescu etc. as active AND identifiable participants. When I was in high school, during the very early days of Slashdot, quite a few highly respected developers, professors and authors would comment regularly under their own names. Reading their comments and having discussions with them definitely changed my life and I think it would be sad to see all these discussions move into private spaces or under anonymity due to fear of the mob.
I don’t think they fear the mob. They fear wasting their time. Where there are quality discussions you will still see lively discussions. Math is an area where top experts will still discuss online. It’s because they are less likely to be inundated with clowns.
Pop culture and politics is where the mob culture resides.
I vehemently disagree. In my experience, a very substantial number of them fear the mob because there's so much at stake and nobody is interested in falling on their sword. Many people want to talk politics and philosophy and those subjects are often hard to avoid unless conversation is heavily restricted. I've had tons of conversations about algorithms that naturally turn into discussions of political and philosophical ramifications. A substantial amount of the screening that goes into accessing private communities revolves directly around likelihood of charitable interpretation, secrecy and behaviour on public social networks.
I disagree. In fact I spent some time looking online and I think there are more technical discussion I've ever seen online. There is more open source code then ever before and most of that discussion happens in the open. Many of the biggest contributors have these discussions online. I simply haven't seen the discussions disappear from public view as you seem to. Maybe you just aren't looking hard enough to find them?
I can't link either of the two I use here for obvious reasons, but the primary one I frequent is just a private website made by a bunch of Googlers. It's basically just an invite only forum with a more complicated trust/permission system. It's very active with roughly 5,000 users and access to boards is limited by a trust system which operates similarly to private torrent trackers.
The second one, which I only use occasionally, is a private Android/iOS app that is very similar to Signal group chats.
I've heard of quite a few others but I don't have first hand experience with them.
Most forums have private boards or even private discords etc that you’d never know about until invited. (And if you do know about them they’re not the private ones, just the restricted ones - many layers like onions.)
Feedback is best received when you relate to the person who is giving it and you trust the giver has your best interest at heart.
While the "current environment" may make it so women are more weary of men (and thus less likely to receive feedback) - I think there is a stronger current.
White male investors see people outside of their social group and realize that their advice might not be well received- not because of a flame war, but simply because they don't look like them. I'm fully convinced this effect is visible with all mixes of social groups (race, gender, religion, national origin, job family).
This effect sucks, and we should be looking for ways to unite ourselves to other people so that we can receive hard advice and also give hard advice.
It's a sort of similar to the prisoner's dilemma. It's hard to keep a community cooperative when there are defectors about and our impression of how likely others are to defect on us influences how willing we are to cooperate.
That's why you see people looking for smaller, more trust-bound online communities to associate with.
"Similar to how kids used to roam around the neighborhood but now it's deemed too risky because the media makes it seem like there are murderers lurking around every corner."
They're called cars. Houses are packed tighter and there's more cars per household than when I was growing up (maybe due to everyone being double income now). Streets are also narrower and most have street parking, creating visibility issues. Go check out a development than went up 40-50 years ago compared to one that went up in the last 5 years. The difference is pretty stark and pretty hostile to kids running around doing kid stuff.
I don't think media's focus on bad guys has nearly the impact that the enormous increase in cars has had.
Honestly, this is pretty trivially avoided. My parents drilled it into my head to look both ways before going into a street. I always look ways before going into the street. It's really not difficult.
It is trivially avoided once the kids are old enough, but there's a long period during which kids would be safe enough to roam around in the absence of cars, but aren't in the current environment.
We live a block from the playground, close enough that I can almost see it from our window, but you can't get there without crossing the street. So our kids (7y, 5y) can only go there with a grown up. I've worked on teaching them how to cross the street safely, but they're just not good enough at checking for cars yet.
I'm still not buying it. I lived in Switzerland for a while where kids walk themselves to school starting at like 5 years old, and there are loads of cars.
One explanation here is certainly the media being sensationalist for sensation's sake.
An alternative is that some in media might think the crackdown on sexism is bad. Hence they focus on the bad effects. Whether this is explicit propaganda or honest reporting on what they consider the more important issue almost seems like a semantic question.
I suspect both elements play a role. How big a role I have little idea.
Creating a throwaway for obvious reasons. I'm not an investor but someone who is in a position to make key decisions about peoples' careers and give advice, and I do have a bit of a trick I use for this.
There was one black female mentee who I noticed was timid in taking credit for her work. I had recently attended a diversity panel where someone in a similar role as me said that in a similar situation, and her advice to her mentee was "Think about what a white man would do" and everyone applaud such an insightful advice. So identifying such an opportunity, I said the exact same thing word for word, basically "I see you're hesitating to take credit for your work. Think about what a white man would do."
Immediately after saying that, I could tell it wasn't taken well, and she asked "what does that mean?" I couldn't come up with an answer for that which wouldn't be taken in a really bad way, so I backpedaled. She later reported me to an administrative person who luckily felt it was too vague to file a serious report about, but told me to watch what I say.
But I do have a solution (my trick). From that point on, I definitely give more subtle advice unless they have passed my test, which is I see how they react to situations where they could give the benefit of the doubt to others in vague situations. Sometimes, I'll bring up a past story about another anonymous person and see if they are outraged and want to get them in trouble. Only the ones who remark that they probably had good intentions, and don't react too strongly, I'll give more candid advice to.
This situation is extremely sad because the whole "have the confidence of a medicine white man" thing is a common slogan used by feminists to try to combat the general lower levels of self-confidence among women.
I guess you yourself repeating the same woke quite took away the uniqueness of the idea as it would be articulated by a non privledged individual.
I made a successful complaint to my HR department when someone used that very phrase. I very much agreed with the part of the person's intent to support and embolden the woman. But it's not OK to attack other people in the effort to support someone. Why not say something positive like "other people can do it, so can you"?
I think you learned the wrong trick. The "trick" is to not have a trick. Use mature, respectful language and not echo the divisive political language wielded by activists.
Exactly. There is no need to inject identity politics when you just need to tell someone that they need to make sure to take credit for their work. If you inject identity politics into a situation, you are taking a risk. Going into identity politics when there is no need to just comes across as someone being a vain moralist.
I think he tried to use mature, respectful language. But he apparently anyway put his foot in his mouth.
Of course everyone should do their best in being sensitive in their ways of expressing themselves. But many people could definitely show a little bit more generosity in their interpretations and not jump on every chance to interpret something like racism or sexism.
> What was wrong with a "be bolder"/"be more assertive"/"don't be afraid of taking credit for your work"?
I don't see those as useful since it doesn't provide the person any actual guidance or reference point. What does assertive mean? What should I exactly do? How do I do it? "Act like X" provides a well known reference point that they can use to adjust their behavior based on. They can remember all the times they've seen X do something in a similar situation and then just act like that.
If you want to make it super explicit, come up with examples. "Be bolder, for example for this project I saw you doing 80% of the work, you should get to headline the presentation and have top billing on the authors page".
"Act like X" is also potentially useful, if you make it explicit. Explicit is not "Act like a white man" (whaaaa?). Explicit: is "Act like Bob, for example do you remember when HR said he couldn't have a new screen and he insisted"?
But all that does in practice is that only those who can come up with perfectly worded advice on the spot that will not offend anyone will be giving advice to people who might become offended. Which actually hurts the underprivileged since they will now receive a significantly reduced amount of advice.
"Act like X" in this situation is not a well known reference point and not a good way to express the idea. Know how we know that? Because the person who said it offended someone and then got reported. Please, quit trying to justify using racially-charged language in this situation
By that definition of something being problematic "someone you said it to got offended" the OP has resolved the issue. Now people he talks to no longer are offended by what he says. I suspect however that you don't like his solution to the problem even though it resolves the very definition of it being an issue you bring up.
It doesn't actually resolve anything. Just because someone passed a test to see if X was offensive, it doesn't mean they won't find Y offensive. So no, I don't like this 'solution', because it's not a good one. It takes risk where none is needed.
There is a lot of value in the "imagine what someone else would think or do" mechanic of giving people advice. There certainly are dragons in asking somebody to act like a white dude, so don't do that.
"Be bolder" is different than "what do you think a bold person would do?"
I have had many conversations with people going through a tough time and unsure of what to do or how to feel in a situation and there is this trick to getting people to think differently that almost always works... ask the question
"What would a reasonable person do in your situation?"
Suddenly the person having trouble coming up with the answer "What should I do?" has a perfect answer to "What would a reasonable person do?"
It's a psychological trick that goes after how one thinks about one's self and how one thinks about someone else being quite different. If you refocus your attention to view yourself from an external objective, you often end up with much better judgement.
"Think about what a white man would do" seems completely ambiguous to me. It's not a clear way to communicate. It would be better to follow up "I see you're hesitating to take credit for your work" with specific examples of what she might be able to say. Or you could give examples of behavior that people she knows have exhibited.
Even if "what a white man would do" wasn't emotionally charged (and it is), it's not a good way to make the point.
I think it's not a useful exercise to come up with a better phrasing of the advice, as that's not really the point here. When you're in the moment reacting to peoples' questions and giving advice on the spot, you don't have time to wordcraft your speech like this. You'd still mess up once in a while.
Look at how often people tweak, clarify, and edit their comments even here on hacker news. So you'll probably just end up with "stifled" advice (using the terminology from the article), as you can see with all these suggestions in this thread.
There's a difference between wordcrafting and giving obviously preposterous advice like "What would a white man do?"
If I was giving advice to someone who was too assertive and taking too much credit, I would never say "Think about what a black woman would do." Things like this are so transparently racist it shouldn't even need to be explained. You are simultaneously characterizing a race and gender of people and also telling someone else to act like a different race and gender.
The reason the advice was poorly received is because it is nonsense. The recipient of the advice asked the perfect question - "what does it mean to act like a white man?" The OP, when asked, also doesn't seem to know what it means. I'd say there is a lesson there - don't repeat something just because it was will received when you originally heard it. You may not understand it. It may be something of an emperor's new clothes situation where nobody can question the person who gave the original advice, but that doesn't make it good.
I'm not a fan of racialising everything either, but I don't think the intended meaning of that advice is really so obscure. It is something like 'white guys have been socialised to put themselves forward and take credit for things, whereas our society has probably squashed those tendencies in you; but in this setting you would benefit from being more like those white guys, i.e. more assertive and less self-effacing'. It's fair enough to be annoyed by the generalisations, the insistence on bringing race into everything, etc., but I don't think it takes much charity to see that the underlying point is well-intentioned and not obviously stupid.
There is absolutely no reason to bring race into it. If you need to tell someone to be more assertive, then tell them to be more assertive and give examples of how and explain why. Don't bring up racist generalizations and hope they are interrupted the way you want them to be.
Saying that white men are confident and black women aren't is simultaneous bi-directional racism. You are generalizing white men and black women AND telling black women to act more white?
I'm not advocating the race-based approach, just pushing back against the idea that the advice was complete nonsense or hopelessly ambiguous. I can see why someone would say it with good intentions and a basically sensible message in mind. I agree that it was framed in a silly way and that race-based rhetoric and generalisations, even from the 'progressive' side, are usually a bad idea.
No matter how dumb it is, in what way is it ambiguous? How could you possibly interpret it in any other way than 'be more confident/less hesitant in taking credit'?
> No matter how dumb it is, in what way is it ambiguous?
That it is unclear is obvious in that the person using the stereotype couldn't identify the concrete, actionable behavior they intended to encourage when directly questioned.
I can't imagine how someone would think that is a good suggestion.
Are they implying white men are smarter/better so they always take the right decisions? If that's what they're doing, they're also implying, in this case, she, as a black woman, is not as smart as a white man.
I'm a white man surrounded by mostly white people working on a field with mostly white men and I can't say what a white man would do in certain situations because we're all different and we all think differently.
A generous interpretation would be that a white man typically mentions their accomplishments without reservation. I.e. they are comfortable speaking up in almost any circumstance. (They most often are in secure in their employment and role.)
I don't think that's generous at all. It's characterizing all white men. If I told a bad math student to think what an Asian person would do would you take the "generous interpretation" of "study more"?
Why not just say what you mean without the racial stereotypes?
Claiming that "What would a white man do?" Is not intending to bucket people has moved beyond "interpretation" and into gaslighting. The entirety of the advice is bucketing people.
"Graceful interpretation" does not mean that you ignore the advice and substitute for it what would have been good advice.
> Are they implying white men are smarter/better so they always take the right decisions? If that's what they're doing, they're also implying, in this case, she, as a black woman, is not as smart as a white man.
I suffer a bit from imposter syndrome, so I completely get what the GP is getting at, it was just phrased ambiguously.
Here is a disambiguated version: "Imagine what a privileged, entitled, overconfident, upper-midlle-class cishet white dude would do, and do that."
When you speak, people pay attention! Comic books pander to your adolescent fantasies! Your doohickey is the greatest thing since sliced bread! In fact, it's the greatest thing since unsliced bread! You're a frickin genius for dreaming it up! Your LoMoSo strategy is going to make billions for you, the few early employees that don't quit, and the VC that you choose to let invest! You're making the world a better place through scalable fault-tolerant distributed databases with asset transactions! The world is your oyster, and everyone who laughed at you in high school is going to be sorry! Bwahahaha!
Er, ahem. Pardon, got just a little carried away there.
Anyhoo... that advice has nothing to do with capability, talents, skills, or accomplishments, and everything to do with self-promotion and attitude. If you don't toot your own horn, who will?
Perhaps phrase it as an open-question, rather than something that can be open to interpretation.
"How do you feel it went when people were talking about the work done on the project?" Allow them to chat ..."Do you think the credit was equally shared out?"
It’s remarkable the level you go to to bridge this gap even after being burned, literally no one else would, I wouldn’t. Is it worth my job, career, families future? That’s the calculus and risk imo.
I'm not saying what she did is right, but you unnecessarily brought in race into a situation that could easily have been handled without race.
> I see you're hesitating to take credit for your work
Could easily be followed up with actionable items to take credit for her work: do a company/department wide presentation for instance. Instead you gave her vague non-advice. I'm a white man and I have no idea what a white man would do because I know a ton of different white men who would all do very different things.
I think the learning for you should be: don’t repeat other people’s words without understanding what they are supposed to mean, what’s the context, what’s the reasoning behind them. I would say that a proper answer to _”What do you mean?”_ (or even better, a well communicated preamble before the phrase) would pass the right message and not sound ofensive.
"what does that mean?" I couldn't come up with an answer for that
This seems to fit the definition of cargo cult.
You clearly had good intentions, but you can't go around saying phrases without being able to back them up. This should be familiar to you from technical situations - consider: "prefer composition over inheritance" - reasonable advice, but be prepared to explain yourself, not just parrot it.
It's contextually a lot different though. In this case, it's not that he didn't have an answer or a means to clarify, it's that, based on her initial reaction, he didn't have one he wasn't sure would dig a deeper hole.
I doubt anyone out there will have a similar visceral reaction to discussing code architecture.
I disagree. I can think of many ways to clarify the remark in a manner that I personally wouldn't see anything wrong with. At the same time, I can imagine a person intent on outrage finding a reason to be mad about any one of them. I generally assume that people I'm engaged with professionally aren't looking for opportunities to be mad.
Its subjective. Personally, I don't think it's reasonable to become upset by a single comment, made with good intentions, as happened in the story, certainly not upset enough to want professional consequences for the other party.
Even a single comment made with ill intent I don't think would push me all the way to pursuing professional recourse, not without me trying to 'fix' things on my own first.
I do wonder if some boss in the future will only employ straight white males simply to avoid people "offending" others (it's hard to offend a straight white male in this new woke ideology). Of course this has the opposite effect to what the woke seem to want, but this is the world we have built ourselves.
Let's say you never employ any women in your org: this means you never have to deal with pregnancies and lengthy maternity leave, hospital visits, etc. Straight away you have an advantage over your competition simply due to the extra man-hours (heh!). In software dev I've never encountered a situation where having women devs would make a blind bit of difference to the outcome.
Of course this is deeply unfair on women, and we all want to live in a fairer society, I just don't think the woke ideology is the solution.
And imagine, that for some reason, women are not attracted to your products? That is half the market.
I remember car companies working this out back in the eighties. The companies that understood that women have their own needs in a car that men did not share, yet women are a important part of family purchase decisions, did better.
Of course employing someone to help you target your product to as many people as possible makes sense. But employing someone just because they tick an (arbitrary) box makes no sense in a competitive field.
And no HR department. No complaints, fewer sick leave, everyone focussed on meritocracy = no competition on victimisation = little need for paperwork / risk mitigation = no HR, and no meetings about this. It’s a huge business expenditure, worth a good 15% of the total mass.
The competitive advantage is hard to quantify though, whereas the disadvantage can be felt directly and immediately if you aren't careful. If someone gets burned, it's hard to see how a vague notion of some intangible advantage would push them to risk a repeat.
As a white male from a poor southern family (not very tolerant) I've had to learn a few hard lessons on similar fronts. I know I don't have a good gauge for what is and isn't ok, even now. Given that in many occasions even mirroring words or behaviors can be a no-no, the only way I've learned that is 100% effective at not causing problems is shutting up, which I'm generally pretty bad at. Luckily I've had mostly understanding and light hearted coworkers, so I haven't been outright ruined yet, but I can think of more than one occasion that likely would have turned my life upside down if the audience was less sensitive to my intent.
Apparently the research on that is sketchy. It is only an advantage if specifically sought out and used. It requires work. Otherwise it can just lead to bad communication and less team spirit. (I am paraphrasing a recent article from somewhere)
Diversity CAN BE a competitive advantage if everyone else is carving out a strict path.
But if everyone is extremely diverse then heterogeneity could actually be the competitive advantage, allowing a business to specialize more or take advantage of certain economies of scale etc. etc.
Also, I find that more often than not, too much diversity leads to internal conflict because ideas differ too much, which can turn into a competitive disadvantage.
I used to work in a diversity company where white males were usually not promoted nor valued, or those who were promoted were absolutely excellent. I specifically remember having trouble explaining a bug to a boss, then I noticed she didn’t know what an HTTP header was. It happens, when you’re promoted so fast that you don’t spend time as a dev.
Anyway, exited, created my company, but seriously, I’m extremely bitter about diversity, it’s just a way to enslave us and let us run the rat’s race while collecting taxes and job creation on us. They ain’t gonna win anything if they push white males so much out that they are bitter by the time they create their company. Racism is just a reaction to being treated badly.
I am very glad you rethought that racist sexist approach. It was a learning experience for you. I am glad it did you no harm, even better.
People need to be tolerant of casual racism and sexism, up to a point. People have been raised like this, advised to to act like this, they need a chance to learn. It is tough on those on the receiving end, and unjust. But the world will not change over night and the prejudice is so ingrained at every level of our society.
This poster here shows that prejudice can be easily overcome if not combined with bigotry
well ... interpreting everything in the worst way possible will lead to the outcome that the poster will never say anything again. And that will help no one!
Your "trick" shows whether or not the other person will consider the whole range of things you could have meant instead of assuming the most likely thing in their judgement. So it's useful. It reminds me of shit tests in dating where you trigger situations just to see their reactions to certain situations.
Regarding why you can't just say the same thing word for word, that's because shared context matters.
This is basic social skills. If you don't have the same shared background and context, then it's unclear if you mean one thing or the other.
So when one woman says "Think about what a white man would do", to another woman, there's the implication that they're talking about their shared experiences regarding society's expectations around women.
When a man says that to a woman, especially it's a white man saying that to a black woman, your contexts and backgrounds are so wildly different that surface area of what you could mean is quite large.
So when you had the chance to clarify yourself and you backpedaled, that made it look even worse because it implied that you had bad intentions and were trying to take your words back.
So yes, it's true. You can't say the same thing word for word as one person say to another if you and the other person do not share the same contexts.
> had recently attended a diversity panel where someone in a similar role as me said that in a similar situation, and her advice to her mentee was "Think about what a white man would do" and everyone applaud such an insightful advice. So identifying such an opportunity, I said the exact same thing word for word, basically "I see you're hesitating to take credit for your work. Think about what a white man would do."
That's...horrible advice generally, though there are specific circumstances where it might be useful, and it is tragic if it was an example used in a diversity panel as anything but a negative example without a whole lot of context because it (1) appeals to race/gender stereotypes, and (2) requires, for it to even approximate actionable advice, for the mentor and mentee to share race/gender stereotypes. In fact, I've been to lots of such panels/trainings, and fairly commonly seen exactly that used as a negative example.
What would be more useful if your first instinct is to give this advice is to first unpack what behavior you are stereotyping as white/male behavior that you actually want to encourage, and then just advise that behavior without appeal to race and gender stereotypes.
"Think about what you would have told a white man"
Well that leads to something like "Toughen Up, It's Part of the Job".
I don't think it helps to activly missunderstand people, when they are trying to be helpful EVEN if their trying is in the wrong. Try to think about the intention and maybe ask what they really meant by that.
I did't want to hurt you, but i don't see the path to a better world to just think the worst of people. The most people want to be good and create good things, sometimes they don't know better ...
I don't say you should not fight back. Racism has to be fought!
I hope we can all agree that in 90% of the cases we can hear on the tone in the voice what the poster meant. If unclear ask and if racism occurs report the ** out of him :D
I'm not sure what you want readers to take away from this, but it sounds to me like you could use some help learning to communicate. Regardless of whether it contains the words "white man" or not, you should probably be able to explain any sentence you utter to another person. If you can't, I respectfully suggest that specific utterance would be better off unspoken.
In this case a simple followup of "you deserve more credit and I want you to feel able to advocate for yourself" would have cleared up the confusion and avoided a lot of trouble, and you wouldn't have had to invent a story-telling system in order to filter out people who believe in accountability.
When I see that I tell folk: "Talk about how awesome you are loudly and frequently! Every other idiot does it. Difference is you're awesome. Make sure the world know"
This does contain the essence of your advice; namely, to take credit for work more often, and or more clearly.
My approach is very different.
And I have had the pleasure of mentoring women into male dominated roles a time or two. Fortunately, we were able to establish trust and another male coworker involved in mentoring worked in a similar way. There were challenges, but we made them team ones, not just hers. That made a big difference, IMHO.
What we did was take gender out of it early on, unless it made sense.
In this case, the advice would be, "you should take credit more." And the follow on would be ways to do that and to support the person who will benefit from doing it. That can be as simple as some recognition and sharing later:
"I saw you go for it. Nice! So, how do you feel about it? What happened? Will you do it again?" Etc...
Where gender does come up, that discussion almost always involved a telling of things. And the reason, explained if need be, is just simple understanding.
"How is it for you?"
And that helps with, "what if it were me?"
And then advice makes sense, because there is context, a shared basis.
That is not always needed. Hard to say when it is. But when it is, having it really helps get past or through whatever the challenge is.
I have been fortunate to have women in my life who will share, who I have worked with, who I have helped, and who have helped me. And the things they share have highlighted the fact that their experience is different. Same goes for many attributes, race, beauty, etc...
Often, the barrier to sharing and understanding boils down to some shame, or blame, or admission of weakness, or the perception of making excuses. And while those things can be part of the discussion, it is unhealthy to presume they are, and my experience shows me that presumption happens more than it should.
And that all contributes to how hard this matter is, or can be.
I am a guy, and have found myself discriminated against for seriously considering, "what if it were me?" Or for asking, "How is it for her, or them?"
It is almost like a betrayal, or threat... something I am expressing poorly. Sorry for that, I just do not have precise words.
Often we are asking people different from us to see things from a more familiar point of view. More familiar to us, but what good is that when it simply is foreign to them?
I resolved it this way: we should be seeking a better perception of what it is like for people very different from us. Mutual understanding and respect, consideration.
In my view, there should be no shame in any of that. But there is! And all this is harder.
Since that time, I have paid a lot more attention to these dynamics. Barriers to understanding one another better present real costs and risks that can be avoided, again in my view.
She was kinda right to report you. Your advice was stupid sexist and racist empty phrase and she, in contrast to you, was smart enough to notice it and actually question it. Your back-pedalling just reinforced her already bad opinion of you. Next time try to think before parroting some "guru"'s advice.
I think it's now essentially a risk-reward decision, like the author said. And the potential risk of being ousted after being accused of something weighs very high.
The only rational strategy today is to give absolutely nothing away whenever possible. That includes never posting anything under your name online, not under any circumstances - unless you have no choice, for professional / work reasons.
Every opinion has an easily triggered mob attached to it now, so some mob group will target you if you get any attention upon you.
It's amazing how fast the US became a 99% censored nation (either self-censored, mob cancelled, or censored by big tech), terrified, buried under authoritarian & hyper angry mobs desperate to attack other people. It happened within a single decade.
It's going to get a lot worse yet. I used to tell myself that living in the US was worthwhile despite its flaws because at least we had tremendous free speech protections (and most countries do not), and that's no longer true de facto. The US is arguably now worse - in reality, not the pretend notion that free speech still technically exists - than more speech censoring nations like Canada.
I don't think the author needed to bring "false accusation" into the picture here, and in fact it weakens the point. I think male investor saying to a female CEO that her male colleague is better suited to the CEO role would be taken, ipso facto, as sexism. No falsehoods need enter the picture.
But in this case it would be a false accusation. That's kind of the entire point - he's afraid to give honest feedback out of fear of a false accusation.
I feel like history is going to look at this phenomenon as a strange curiosity, the same way we look at the Inquisition or the Salem Witch Trials today or even some of the communist revolutions.
People will say "It's pretty unbelievable that happened, because no sane individual would ever condone something so extreme."
I suspect (most) individuals are behaving rationally (in the own best interest), but in aggregate it leads to the group collectively behaving incredibly irrationally.
My own pet theory is that each age has a Great Insanity, almost like it's some kind of cosmic human constant. The particular insanity varies from generation to generation, but it still exists.
It might be witches in one generation, flying saucers, communists in another, Jews in another, or blacks; the possibilities are inexhaustible. We don't know what the next Insanity will be, only that there will be one.
I have a hunch that, roll on a hundred years, everything will turn full circle and we'll be back to segregation of the sexes. "Of course the whole thing was a folly," future generation will claim, "what absurd notion led them to the idea that men and women were the same anyway?"
Each generation has the conceit that it is more enlightened than the last, little realising that they are no smarter than the one before.
My first take on the article is that the author overestimates the impact and even the causality of an investor giving founders advice to swipe roles. It makes it sound simple and so reduced that to turn a company around is just having founders swiping roles.
But that’s beside the point of the article. Ultimately I think it’s on men to learn how to handle giving candid advice in a non-sexist manner. This investor just considered his investment not enough to be worthy bothering to try to find a way to give the same advice in a non-sexist way.
My final take of the article is: founders, don’t listen to advice made by investors who invested a small enough portion of their portfolio to even care if your chances as a company to be successful improve or not.
"Hey XXX,and YYY, do you have time for a discussion tomorrow at lunch? I noticed some things that make me think the company could benefit from you two swapping some responsibilities. I've noticed XXX struggles to aaa,for example aaa1, aaa2 and at aaa3, and at aaa4 YYY seemed to feel very comfortable doing aaa despite having less experienced, and conversely I think XXX's experience might be better suited for bbb, because of my experience at CCCC. Happy to share more of my thoughts and get your own opionion on this at lunch"
I actually fail to see how you can respectfully tell someone you think they should swap roles and be sexist. Sure, if your whole argument is that "XXX isn't coming of agressive enough to survive in this boys game" then you might be accused of sexism...for some reason
That's a nice thought, and might work if the person can articulate the differences well enough. But the entire point of the article is that no matter the argument or ability to make it, there is a fear that the woman might claim sexism simply because he suggested she step out of the CEO role and let the other person (a man) have it (reasons be damned). Even if everything was fine among those 3 people, someone else might take to twitter and frame it as sexist - especially if the advice was taken.
And I am calling that fear bullshit. If you cannot articulate the differences, then why are you making the suggestion? A "gut feeling"? Well, then that might be sexist and deserve being called out as BS. And if everything was fine between those 3 people...just clarify things on twitter?
The fear of a hypothetical "someone" taking something "totally reasonable" out of context is, in my experience, held mainly by people who have a private definition of "totally reasonable" not held by the majority and who'd like to continue holding it without consequences.
You might want a little self-reflection about that last sentence and how it paints you as precisely the sort of person that others are rightfully worried about.
Good looking women (and men) have an easier time making progress in their carrier at least up to the point when everybody starts assuming they just got where they are because of their looks.
Companies with an explicit diversity and inclusion statement on their job applications get more minority applicants but hire proportionally less minority candidates, speculation range from smug interviewers to interviewees being too concerned with being themselves.
Everyone playing the suppression olympics loses in the end.
> Companies with an explicit diversity and inclusion statement on their job applications get more minority applicants but hire proportionally less minority candidates
> I don't have a better word readily available than sexism for trying to talk about patterns like this but when I use the word sexism
I appreciate the effort to think of a better word than sexism. My question is, is this even sexism at all? How many men can get publicly denounced as “sexists” and have their life ruined because they didn’t speak carefully enough, before it is simply just “smart” rather than “sexist” to be extra careful with how you speak to women.
To take the example to an extreme just to illustrate the point: If, in a hypothetical world, men served jail time for making eye contact with women, would it be sexist for men to stare at their feet when women are around?
I am 100% convinced that sexism does exist and is not all that uncommon (I’ve seen my wife deal with it a bit in the workplace). I’m just not convinced this is an example of it. Seems more like it’s the “safe” choice for a man in 2021. Both men and women would benefit if we worked to make it not that way.
There is a danger of getting overly semantic, but also a danger of ignoring the importance of semantics to perspective here. Sexism as opposed to sexists. Sexism, using the term as the the GP does, is how they behave towards or speak to her. That's what sexism is regardless of why it is. It affects her or the workplace the same way whether it is because of "exclusionary assholes" or unintended chilling effects.
Gravity in a box is equivalent to acceleration.
That said, you have a point too. From your (me also) perspective, there's a snookered conclusion to this story. Inasmuch as Twitter mobs are scary, some people are opting out of joining the girls for a drink.. sometimes advisably.
> Sexism, using the term as the the GP does, is how they behave towards or speak to her. That's what sexism is regardless of why it is.
This is incredibly flawed. It can never be behaviour observed in a vacuum. A behaviour's motivation in context is the only thing to observe and - potentially - classify as sexism.
If your perspective is one where you care about "culprits," and whether they are good or bad... motivations matter.
If you're characterising the system, not judging culprits.. you don't care about motivations, historical reasons or such. You just care about how the system behaves.
A sexist office is one where people are treated differently based on sex. That could be because of office rules. It could be because of cultural or religious reasons. It could be because of #metoo. Etc. Say you walk into that office, experience or observe sexism and walk out. You don't know why it's sexist, but you do know that it's a sexist office.
I get that you don't want everyone inside that office painted as sexists. Maybe they're not. That doesn't mean that it's not a sexist workplace. This isn't a criminal trial.
Criminal trials are the way they are because that's the best way we know to find out truth. If you don't care about truth, then just say so directly. No need to mention whether something's a criminal trial or not.
Edit: please don't use HN for ideological battle. You've been doing it repeatedly, and it's not what this site is for. We ban accounts that are using HN primarily for this (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...), and your account looks close to that line if not over it.
I can see this happening with myself (male, for the record). I'm usually someone who gives feedback quite frankly, am more critical of others' (and my own) work than average, etc.
Over recent years I've read so much about women being passed over, cut off, terms like "microaggressions", women getting less talking time in meetings, etc., that's it's made me extremely self conscious.
It's not even that I'm afraid of getting in any actual trouble if I say or do something wrong, it's just that I'm generally already somewhat anxious about how I behave around others and this has made me extremely aware of any time I might be too harsh, not really listen to someone, etc., that I've probably gotten overly sensitive.
I find it funny because they love to talk about implicit bias and microaggressions, and all these other things that "white men" are not aware of, but then cancel them when white men do something wrong. Where is the opportunity to learn and grow?
If you want to make an argument in favor of learning and growing, that's great, but please don't lead with ideological flamebait. That will only produce more flamewar.
I feel the same way. A lot of the emphasis is placed on the words and not enough on the context, intent behind those words (by everyone, not specific to male or female or any other group here). People have learned to keep quiet. And when they do speak, they use highly polished, politically correct language (silly example - first time my manager said he is taking a "bio break", I was confused. Took me a second to understand he is going to the bathroom).
This happens in the media a lot too (left and right). A single sentence (or even part of a sentence) can be plucked out of an interview, shown out of context and boom - the person seems like a monster. Someone might have best intentions, but not be very polished in expressing them. So why risk talking at all, unless we are 100% sure it cannot be misconstrued in any way? It is just easier to keep quiet. Which results in loss of lively, valuable discussions.
Some comedian (forgot who it was) mentioned that they don't like performing in colleges anymore as the audience is too sensitive. That is the situation we are in.
I've always wondered this too. We all know what you're doing anyways so I don't understand why that phrase seems to be trying to "hide" it or something, and afaik there isn't any issues with the words bathroom or restroom right?
Hmm, reading into it it does seem to have been co-opted by corporate.
I've only heard it mentioned within gaming, and it typically means more than just bathroom (Encompassing instead a bunch of different biological necessities like bathroom, hydration, eating)
The British have nailed this one: they simply say they're going to the toilet. What they will do when they arrive is entirely a figment of your imagination, and well if it involves anything nasty that's on you.
Same here, it's not really worth trying. You feel like you're being completely reasonable, but you just know that any mistake in wording, minor details or missteps, is going to be used to attack you. Any relevant comment or question you have will be sidesteps, to attack and label you.
>I don’t think most female founders even realize that they’re getting different advice than their male counterparts. Silicon Valley has always run on candor, but it’s being stifled at the moment, and no one is noticing that we are the collateral damage.
Imagine what it's like being the intended target and not just "collateral damage". It's not a problem that men are nervous to be candid but it's a problem that women are feeling the secondary effects of that?
Have you felt the need to fix rape and murder, which other men have given to society in a manner far over representative relative their demographics?
Maybe if this author was encouraging twitter lynch mobs with scant evidence it would be an apt point, but I don't think there is any sign of that. She doesn't owe the world anything because some other women did something.
I know a couple of female founders (including my wife). The biggest problem is that female might run into a creep and that makes very very stressful experience.
For me... it is easy. First creeps do not want to meet me (I’m fat, older guy, short,..), and if I do meet somebody who is giving me creeps - my experience is not stressful at all.
Btw, I still have not met a female VC: after 22 years in SV.
You've never met a female VC? We just raised our second round and we have 4 women VC's or angels on the captable now. Maybe it's just based on industry. I'm in sports/media tech.
THIS is the comment you deemed taking the thread into a gender flamewar?
Not the dozens of other posts throughout this thread of people making unequivocal statements about how A) one cannot speak to women or minorities anymore without being accused of discrimination, B) how "every" (or some variation of that summary) minority/woman are hurting their cause with constant insistence of discrimination?
Dang, just because someone is civil, does not mean they are logical. Just because they are logical, doesn't mean they are correct.
There are folks all throughout this thread right now that are making broad general summaries of misogynistic and racist talking points, but you are not warning ANY of htem.
To be clear, I'm not saying that I do treat all people equally, regardless of their race, gender, sexuality, etc. I grew up in an environment filled with stereotypes, and they do seep through. I can only strive to avoid having that bias affect how I treat people. If it does leak through, I try to recognize it and do better in the future.
That is what is known as colorblind racism in current social justice thinking. The idea is that treating people equally is inappropriate because you are ignoring the impact of the various oppressions they have experienced.
Some people would go as far as to say this is a cornerstone of white supremacy.
Only if you assume that everyone's circumstances are equivalent. If a diabetic asks for insulin, I don't believe that the only consistent positions are either give everyone or no one insulin.
Similarly, if someone's background (say gender) results in fewer mentorship opportunities because of the ol' boys club, I'm happy to put in some effort to put them in touch with people.
So you don’t in fact treat everyone equally then based on race or gender.
The point I am making is not about whether you are racist though, it’s that saying that you treat all races equally is enough to be classed as racist, regardless of your actual behavior.
There's being a professional but there's also not seeing the situation you are in. I would be hesitant to be in a one on one situation in a private area with a female colleague, especially one below me in the organisational structure. Even an unfounded accusation could completely derail my life and career.
When I was young I had something similar happen. A woman went around telling people she had slept with me. We hadn't. Nobody believed my side of the story since "why would she lie?". This caused a rift with my best friend, who had a crush on her. I lost my best friend due to a lie I couldn't disprove.
> Even an unfounded accusation could completely derail my life and career.
I don't think that treating people poorly because you're worried that not doing so could hurt your career is the right thing to do. It might be pragmatic in your case, but so is taking money out of a wallet you find on the ground.
> I lost my best friend due to a lie I couldn't disprove.
You lost your best friend because your best friend didn't trust you and because someone lied. None of that is your fault. Sometimes the world is a shitty place with shitty people. That isn't a reason to add to that shittiness by refusing to treat women in the workplace as you would men.
Why am I treating someone "poorly" if I refuse to go out of my way to give them help when it's not a requirement of my job? For example, refusing to be an unofficial mentor for somebody. I'm a single parent to two little children, if my career burns it's far more than just me losing some income. I've had to work hard to position myself so I can balance work and family responsibilities.
I've returned every wallet I've ever found and I've never taken any money from them. Doing so poses no risk to myself. It's very easy to stand on your high horse and criticise others but after you've been in the situation of being accused of something it changes your opinion on certain things. I hope that you never have to deal with it.
> Why would you talk to women at all professionally, unless there are reliable witnesses or video recordings?
That's beyond the pale. I've banned this account for reasons explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613795 above, and everywhere else you'll find moderation comments on this site.
Creating accounts to break HN's rules with will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't.
I also work in a very “woke culture.” In fact, as a straight, white, cis man I am in the extreme minority.
I have been told that I can’t do my job which includes negotiating with LGBTQ+ companies because I am an “old, white, cis guy and there is always an unfair power dynamic there” just because of my identity. It is discrimination plain and simple, but I literally stand to have my career derailed if I fight back. One accusation and I don’t get hired again.
I joined the company because I believed, and still believe in company mission which is LGBTQ+ focused.
There is no room for allies at some companies and they silence opinions they don’t like. It hurts everyone.
> A cisgender person (sometimes cissexual, informally abbreviated cis) is one whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth. For example, someone who identifies as a woman and was identified as female at birth is a cisgender woman. The word cisgender is the antonym of transgender.
That comment might make sense a decade ago (when it was mostly relegated to academic journals)[1], but it's been in common use (at least in the U.S.) for years.[2]
Well, we have a term for people that compare trans people to criminals - or worse - like you just did: it's "transphobe." The word "bigot" works just as well, it's just not as precise.
If the company is discriminating against you and like others, why would you still believe in their mission, or at least their ability to carry it out? Why not move to a more sane company that doesn’t have as many mines you might inadvertently step on?
> I have been told that I can’t do my job which includes negotiating with LGBTQ+ companies because I am an “old, white, cis guy and there is always an unfair power dynamic there” just because of my identity.
IANAL, and I don't know what "LGBTQ+ company" means, but if you believe that you're not being allowed to negotiate with other companies because of your age, race, and gender, you can (and should) sue for discrimination.
Interesting pivot from identity politics to "opinions they don't like." One is discrimination, the other is business as usual. I wouldn't conflate the two.
As a gay man myself, I urge you to consider leaving such a toxic environment. I’ve experienced similar (even though I’m gay myself). A more extreme version of what you described actually exists within the LGBT community itself; being gay is sometimes not enough anymore.
A common theme I’ve noticed in these groups is their penchant for using the term “cis male”. Doesn’t matter if you’re straight or gay, the hate is still the same.
It’s better to just walk away from these situations and groups.
> I’m not going to suggest a solution to the problem of men clamming up.
I find this a little frustrating, they’ve noticed a pattern of behaviour that concerns them in an area they are clearly invested in - yet they have no thoughts or suggestions on how to address this? Is it possible they are not offering such thoughts because of the same issue they have highlighted in the article?
It's often useful to split up a solution between defining the requirements in one doc, and the design in a separate one. If you bleed design ideas into the requirements, you can get tunnel vision
I noticed it happened a lot on MeFi when I was active there. Vast reams of text about how terrible X is, but ask what we should do about it and... crickets.
Yes, the observation's valid, but... I don't know. When the conversation keeps happening the same way, over may topics, you have to figure there's something deeper going on.
Some guesses on possible sources of the pattern for you:
1. Criticism is fast and easy compared to thinking up a solution; building the solution; trying to show a solution works; etc. Criticism has the benefit that it can be directed to any sub-part and does not have to, necessarily, take in (or understand) the whole.
2. Criticism is, generally, perceived as "socially safer" than creation. For example, it's easier to say "I don't like X or Y about something" than it is to say "I think that X or Y should be changed to A or B." Proposing the change exposes one to criticism.
3. Criticism, in many ways (thinking of many college courses here), is what folks are often trained in as compared to creation. I think an outcome is that we learn to "see" faults more than we learn to "see" solutions. To be clear, I think folks learn to create in their vocation, but outside of that, necessarily, limited sphere, folks are most often trained as critics, rather than creators.
By my read, the essay's audience is men who don't know as much about running a business as they think they do. Why wouldn't the successful conversation about switching CEOs in the first case work in the second? Idealistically, shouldn't it? Women aren't actually from Venus.
Furthermore, isn't this an issue of long-standing that for some reason is still a big enough problem to raise complaints? How many decades have there been women in upper-management, let alone the C-suite? Why aren't VCs, people who are rumored to be good at analyzing businesses across their field of expertise, already aware of this weakness? Is rooting out inefficiencies only for the businesses in which they invest?
This is to say, why is this essay still necessary? I'd say it's because many men are trying to keep the old world going. Status quo.
I suggest that a VC who can't have the conversation about swapping for CEO in both "directions," who is aggrieved about the present state of business demographics enough to clam up in fear of raising controversy, is not a competent investor.
This is a Continuing Education topic for those who need it, just like RNs have to take a certain number of class-hours each year to stay up on current techniques and technologies. This essay is about and aimed at guys who don't think that their attitudes toward women need changing.
Because the author doesn't know of an actual solution. Sometimes that happens. Most catch-22 situations really don't have a good solution without some external force (in this case the mob) being removed / mitigated.
Probably more like doing what you're better at. Maybe one had the idea and the original vision, so they became CEO by default, whereas they might actually better at developing the product and should do the CTO role instead. But since it's their idea, they are relatively good at evangelising it and relating to the public, investors, and customers. However, the other might be much better at that than at CTO, so the company would benefit by swapping roles.
It doesn't help that the benchmark for oppression gets lower every day. It used to be a concerted, systematic action that's targeted at a small group. Today, it's pretty much anything which hurts one's feelings.
Here's a hot take: This is what happens when kids don't get bullied at school. They don't learn to build the necessary emotional circuitry and calluses to deal with emotional damage.
I don't know where all this "only massive suffering builds strength" stuff comes from.
I'm pretty sure this is analogous to the way you build up muscle: you don't try to squat 300 lbs, tear your hip flexors, and destroy your knees on day one. In fact, repeated injury makes you weaker.
Most social groups do have a mechanism to softly introduce low intensity conflict as play (which may help with emotional strength). Practically any group has escalating banter with escalating intimacy, for instance, permitting growth of emotional resilience in a progressive manner.
I was never bullied in school and I'm generally quite socially comfortable in many situations.
Clearly shows the need for diversity at all levels of the economy and what a problem the dominance of white men (some of my best friends are white men) has been
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 404 ms ] threadSomething has to give.
Obviously obnoxious behaviour should be curbed but the usage of mansplaing (and I would argue: the minting of the term when we have an equivalent in “condescending”)
I don’t even know what to say. I know I am rather shy to give advice to women because I’ve been bullied on Twitter for explaining things even when SOMEONE ASKED FOR CLARITY!
Before the Twitter mobs attacked me I would have been more open mouthed, now I’m aware of how sensitive people are and I try to avoid them feeling uncomfortable so I will choose my words much more carefully.
Kind of like male construction workers can take their shirts off if they get too hot and female construction workers can't. (Real case I read about: Two female construction workers decided to wear bikini tops so they could take their shirts off in the heat and the busty, attractive lady was fired because this was a distraction potentially causing more accidents by the male construction workers. The skinny, flat chested girl wasn't fired because it wasn't literally turning heads when she pulled her shirt off and worked in a bikini top.)
I’d say these situations show that we must have more diversity, not less, in all our interactions so that we learn to become more used to differences (insert race/gender/whatever else some people trip over.)
However idiotic it may seem, in a non-safe, litigating environment one can, sadly, expect these knee jerk reactions. The only way forward is to make our society a safer place. This probably relies on all parties becoming more aware of the effects of their actions as well on the receiving side having a buffer and being tolerant such that we don’t get a cascade effect.
Edit: I mean the above paragraph in the sense that just like aircraft investigations are about finding a root cause instead of blaming, discussions should be more about achieving harmony together or to agree to disagree.
I find my gender is a barrier to getting traction and my experience is that it's due to patterns of this sort and not because most men intentionally want me to fail. But the cumulative effect of most men erring on the side of protecting themselves and not wanting to take risks to engage with me meaningfully really adds up over time and I think that tremendously holds women back generally.
I think gendered patterns of social engagement also contributed to the Theranos debacle. I've said that before and I feel like it tends to get misunderstood as well. (Though in the case of Theranos it runs a lot deeper in that she was actually sleeping with an investor.)
Which is why this needs to be discussed: So a path forward can be found. Our current default patterns aren't working well.
In my experience, one good example of how to do it right is vastly more powerful in solving social ills than any number of people being hung high and scapegoated for getting it wrong.
In fact, I generally feel that scapegoating people in a system where there are no good answers is actively counterproductive and helps keep things stuck. Hanging someone high for not knowing "the right answer" in a system that gives zero good options for how to handle X implicitly suggests that good answers exist and implicitly denies the reality that "We don't know how to do this dance. We don't have an answer for that."
It implicitly suggests there is a means to get this right when the reality is there isn't. So it actively distracts from real problem solving.
I would like to see more real problem solving in this space. As a dirt poor woman, I have a vested interest in seeing a world where there are answers for how to do this dance.
So far, I am mostly coming up empty under circumstances that suggest to me that my behavior is not the problem. The problem is the lack of good answers for how to do this dance.
I recently had a conversation where the lady I was talking to basically said (paraphrasing for brevity) "all men bad, always" and I'm really not sure what she even wanted to achieve. Some kind of perceived revenge maybe? I ended up disengaging and it left me feeling rather deflated. If I'm bad by default and there's nothing I can do to change that, why care at all? Luckily I know that most women are much more reasonable so I will continue to strive to treat everybody equally and how I want to be treated.
But I do worry sometimes that even that can backfire, because I've witnessed another situation (on Twitter) where a lady complained that men who didn't get her joke tweet were mansplaining about how what she wrote was wrong, that they were explaining her (purposeful) error to her because she was a woman. Except others replied with their own versions of the joke and they too were getting "mainsplained" too, even though many were themselves men. That is, some people were misunderstanding the joke and commenting, it wasn't anything to do with her being a woman. But she turned it into a gender issue.
So if I want to treat everyone equal, but that equal treatment can be seen as mansplaining or other negative gendered thing, that makes me more likely to disengage out of fear and then I'm not treating people equally, but not out of malice or feeling of superiority, just out of fear...
Its a big problem and I don't know the answer either.
I recently had a conversation where the lady I was talking to basically said (paraphrasing for brevity) "all men bad, always" and I'm really not sure what she even wanted to achieve. Some kind of perceived revenge maybe? I ended up disengaging and it left me feeling rather deflated. If I'm bad by default and there's nothing I can do to change that, why care at all?
This is a really thorny issue -- that there are people who have been so hurt that they see no path forward. Trying to reach them is really difficult and complicated and puts you at risk of being burned, which tends to leave them painted into a corner that they can't find their way out of.
I'm glad you know other women that are more reasonable and do not feel like giving up over this one incident.
But I do worry sometimes that even that can backfire, because I've witnessed another situation (on Twitter) where a lady complained that men who didn't get her joke tweet were mansplaining about how what she wrote was wrong, that they were explaining her (purposeful) error to her because she was a woman. Except others replied with their own versions of the joke and they too were getting "mainsplained" too, even though many were themselves men. That is, some people were misunderstanding the joke and commenting, it wasn't anything to do with her being a woman. But she turned it into a gender issue.
To be fair to her, it gets really hard to not attribute certain patterns to your gender. It gets really hard to try to make that nuanced distinction that "Not everything is about sexism." and this also ends up being a thorny issue because trying to tell someone who is in that head space that they are wrong gets experienced by them as just another means to undermine them and gaslight them.
I think the best strategy is to try to avoid talking to women about their "personal" stuff. Try to not make it into a "personal" relationship when it really isn't.
I lived a really private life for a lot of years because I was a homemaker for roughly two decades and what I eventually came up with was this idea that women generally get treated like "private" individuals and men generally get treated like "public" people and the way men and women get socialized reinforces that pattern.
So men frequently have "personal" conversations with women in public settings that they wouldn't have with a man or in a way that they wouldn't have with a man and it happens so often that women don't realize "This is not normal and it is not good for your work life."
It's normal for them in their lives and they don't see that this is a problem.
Men focus on the importance of networking and women tend to be better at the social thing and at making personal connections and that tends to be one of their strengths. It is one of mine and I have been baffled and frustrated that it doesn't turn into professional connections.
People talk to me and they want to see me as their new best friend for life or their one true love or something like that and it ends up being enormously frustrating for me because they generally don't have as much to give back to me as I have to give to them in that regard and what I most need is more income and that's never something they want to help with.
People don't want to pay money to their friends for their friendship. Men don't want to pay money to their girlfriend for being their girlfriend.
And people also don't want to open doors for me professionally once it veers into that "personal relationship" space. And it's not simply because they are being selfish jerks or something.
If a man is sleeping with a woman or hopes to, it can be hard to vouch for her. It can be hard to overcome the public perception that "You're just saying that because you are sleep...
For what it’s worth, I’ve always been of the opinion that it’s unhealthy to base your social life around work colleagues (for many reasons), so while I strive to get on well with and be friendly with people I work with, I’ve never seen work as a place to find my primary friends groups or people to date or whatever. It’s just too messy, not just for the two people involved but for everyone around them too. I think that attitude has helped me in my interactions with women in places I’ve worked because it meant that I already don’t see them as a potential partner but rather as a professional colleague just like the men there. I try to just treat people how I want to be treated, regardless of gender or race or anything else, and from other conversations with women, I’ve been told that the best way to “help” is to do just that and to watch out for when they are being ignored and to help amplify their voices in those cases (eg if men are not giving women a chance to say their bit in a meeting, to say something like hey I’d really like to hear what she has to say, can you please stop interrupting, or whatever). That all seemed super reasonable to me and I’ve taken it on board (but haven’t been in a situation to put it into practice since, due to covid).
But these two more recent interactions did give me pause and made me question whether I would get into trouble for doing what I believe is the right thing... which brings us here.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to reply, I find these insights enlightening, even if they’re your 1am thoughts :)
PS I find networking pretty hard myself. I guess for very different reasons though...
This is an interesting perspective, and it's something that I found weird when I started working with Americans - they're so cagey about their non-work lives compared to how people are in Ireland. With most of my previous co-workers I'd know their backstories and their partners/spouses/kids names, even if I've never met them, but with my current (mostly American) team unless I actually ask people this stuff they absolutely only ever talk about work, unless they have a story or two that from their real lives that fits with their work persona
To me, talking with people is a really normal activity, but it's gone weird places with people who seem to think we have a super intimate relationship because I talked with them a little. And they reflect that back to me as being far more conversation than they've had with anyone in ages and now want to treat me like their personal possession or some nonsense.
Just being less share-y and drawing certain boundaries seems to be the only effective approach. Being what I think of as personable, polite and diplomatic just goes really weird places at times and then I can't get rid of people who latch onto me like obsessed nutcases.
Reading up on some Irish playwright helped me feel more at peace with some things.
I'm American. Born and raised here and spent most of my life here. But I tend to get misread a lot by Americans and tend to hit it off better with foreigners, third culture kids, people who have traveled a lot, etc.
Anyway, your comments have given me lots to think about. Thanks! Hopefully you find ways to improve things for yourself too.
First choice, I remain silent. Best case, the female CEO kills it and I make some money. Worst case she flops and I lose my investment. Potentially great upside, relatively minor downside.
Second choice, I suggest a change. Best case the company does well and I make money. Worst case I’m labeled a sexist and I’m effectively ejected from the startup world. Potentially great upside, but unlimited losses.
Easy choice. I stay silent.
Agreed same here.
Unfortunately I think the reality will be that male founders may get even more funding than before, which will then lead to a potentially wider gap.
And then the cycle will continue, a misread of the situation as sexism or more accusations of sexism than before will lead to more people staying with the easy choice of being silent.
I'm reminded of that quote, "better to be silent and be thought of as an idiot than to open your mouth and remove any doubt people have." The same thing is true for investors but with idiot replaced by sexist.
But yes, doing it safely requires skill.
I’m not sure why female founders are being portrayed as a different species? They’re humans. They know about sexism. They know when what they’re seeing is sexism vs critical feedback. And they will understand if you express your concerns with that.
It's only sexism if it happens to a woman, therefore the word "feminism" itself isn't inherently sexist.
It's only racist if it happens to someone of color. White people can't be discriminated against by definition. Anyone who believes in "reverse discrimination" is a "racist" who has "too much entitled privilege."
Be quiet and accept the prevailing, correct opinions and beliefs, or be labeled and canceled. There is no debate and there is no discussion because the ideological mafia has already decided what beliefs are proper today. Oh and anyone who doesn't renounce yesterday's micro aggressions should be forced to resign if they don't apologize hard enough four times.
The left is a circular firing squad that doesn't have any loyalty.
I do believe that in the US sexism is generally one directional due to the intrinsic imbalance in power. There are stereotypes about males, and they are harmful in some cases, but generally because more men have power the harm to women is more pervasive and severe.
Same thing with respect to race and white people, actually.
I don't understand what you're trying to say about sexism or racism because your sentences don't make grammatical sense.
Sexism exists and affects both genders. Imbalances in power mean the effects of sexism are generally felt more by women than by men. The narrative that men cannot understand or recognize sexism, or have an inferior ability to do so, is not supported by the facts. It is also harmful to overcoming the problems of sexism by men toward women.
I hold a similar view with respect to the relationship between racism and white people.
Regardless of gender, the other issue is if they're crazy or unable to accept feedback, then they may try to make you look bad. It's probably a good idea to socially screen all founders carefully so you know who you're dealing with.
One can't possibly guarantee that every founder (female or not) knows that, and in fact, TFA implies that many don't. So the possibility that at least one of them will think the investor sexist for giving feedback is unfortunately not zero. And, of course, this option doesn't seem to consider the possibility that even if the founder takes the criticism at face value, someone else might not.
In light of that, the third choice you present seems to be GP's second choice after all.
There is a nonzero risk in any social interaction that involves giving critical feedback. The way you manage that risk is by investing in healthy relationships, not by perceiving literally half of humanity as being too risky to be worthy of critical feedback.
I’m not quite sure what to say to you. Living life involves risks. It sure seems like one of those risks is being deliberately amplified to be used as an excuse to “not even bother” with female founders.
Which leads me back to GP's point: there are only two choices. I take it that you're saying that the risk of the second choice can be ignored if taking some steps, but the consequences remain the same, and GP didn't speak about the thresholds or ways to improve the odds. He only mentioned that the risk exists and isn't worth it for him, and you disagree, but that's not much to go on.
> I’m not quite sure what to say to you. Living life involves risks. It sure seems like one of those risks is being deliberately amplified to be used as an excuse to “not even bother” with female founders.
Conversely, I'm not sure what's being implied here so I don't know how to reply.
For what it's worth, TFA isn't saying that investors aren't bothering with female founders. They are, but are being careful with the feedback they give.
ETA: Forgot to mention, the way you're suggesting investors to "manage" the risk not only doesn't remove the risk for investors, but it also leaves female founders at a disadvantage anyway: male founders can get critical feedback right away, female founders have to wait until a rapport is built.
What I'm trying to demonstrate is that the framing of the choices involved as just the two is misleading and not at very useful. Not sure what you're trying to imply by going through the pedantry of demonstrating that what I said is "actually covered by the second choice". If that makes you happy, let it be so, its a false dichotomy.
> Conversely, I'm not sure what to reply to this. It seems to me like you're implying that the people who are discussing this are "sexists looking for an excuse", but that sounds like an uncharitable interpretation, so I might as well ask if you could clarify what you meant by this.
I stated a possibility for why the people are behaving in the way it has been described. The reasoning given seems to be "some women founders may interpret it as sexism", which to me seems like an uncharitable interpretation.
I am trying to point out that this only makes sense to an audience of males. The reason could be equally viewed as "some men investors do not want to deal with women founders", which is another uncharitable interpretation.
> For what it's worth, TFA isn't saying that investors aren't bothering with female founders. They are, but are being careful with the feedback they give.
The article is very clearly stating that investors are withholding from giving the kind of advice that could decide between whether the company succeeds or fails. I would actually say that's worse than outright rejection to work with female founders, as investors play an important role in filtering out bad ideas and convincing founders of good ideas.
Depends on the quantum of risk.
I'll make someone unhappy at most but the truth will help them? Sure.
I can be labelled as sexist and it might end my career? Hard nope.
White men can and do blame sexism and racism for their failure to advance all the time, and have been doing so since the day when overt discrimination in their favor stopped being a near-universal norm.
EDIT: of course, the audience that is favorably predisposed to such complaints is very different to the ones predisposed the same way toward claims from other groups, but it is very large and socially influential.
Yes, everyone is guilty of this. When you mess up, blame someone else. That's how you get stuck regardless of your race or gender. You'll be on a crusade against the wrong thing and never achieve anything.
Indirectly: Men should be wary of partnering up with women because investors might see such a partnership as "danger zone" and pass.
I KNOW sexism exists and should be eradicated. Unfortunately the current way of doing things cause lots of unintended consequences for women. I (a man), for one, refuse to put myself in a position where I'll have to make explicit decisions for men vs. women on the merit of their work because there is a chance that if the woman "loses" they'll label me a sexist (they can genuinely feel that way, but I know that my intentions are not towards gender discrimination - unfortunately there is no way to convince her of that if that happens). That means I tend to not work with women, even though I hate passing on people that will do the work well. If they have a history with such activism, it is worse because whatever happens, if they are terminated for any reason, it will most probably be labeled discrimination. If they have a social media following, I'm screwed. So it is difficult. I don't want to pass on them but the potential consequences for any misunderstanding are too large. I don't want to live and work while walking on eggshells.
I do not live in the Anglo Saxon world; know this well.
I would say so, and the thought that anyone would level some of these weird gender arguments I've primarily seen from Anglo-Saxon news sources wouldn't cross my mind, for it has never happened to me in my life. — and I am not entirely sure as to how much I should believe such stories I read on the internet that speak of how seemingly every single issue in Anglo-Saxon culture is phrased in terms of an imaginary gender war.
I have never in such professional disputes in my life felt as though gender were used as an excuse, or reason, I have never in my life been accused of sexism when I criticized female staffmembers, and I have never seen it happen to anyone else either, I have never seen anyone go that route as a matter of defence.
Perhaps, a difference is that Dutch professional analyses ten to be more numerical, and that the Anglo-Saxon more often wings it based on feeling rather than numbers. It is o course far harder to argue with numbers.
What you want the world to be isn't what the world is, and in this case it's true, as by law in the Netherlands, various promotional and termination choices are required to be justified by numbers, which is not the case in Anglo-Saxon countries, where employers are more so at liberty to subjectively assess whom they wish to promote, and whom not.
I simply said that in Dutch decisions of whom to promote, numbers play a greater sway than in Anglo-Saxon promotions; the claim you are attacking is another altogether.
The Dutch cultural tendency to be very blunt is probably not helping your case.
I'm leaving this comment in hopes of being personally helpful to you as an individual and it's probably foolish for me to do so. It would probably be better for me to say nothing, but it's just kind of a pet peeve of mine so to speak, so I am doing it anyway.
This entire thread is a sea of doomsday tears of fatalism and how bad it is, and how the culture is on a collision course with death, and mine was the perspective that I'm skeptical that it's truly as bad as they claim.
I'm far less dismissive of their own culture than they are.
But indeed, what they're tired of is not dismissing Anglo-Saxon culture, but that an outsider does so and having to hear that it's not the entire world.
They're own dismissals are far greater than mine.
> The Dutch cultural tendency to be very blunt is probably not helping your case.
My case? is it not further evidence of my thesis that there are cultural differences at play here?
One may assume that is is only to be expected that in a blunter culture, one would be less inclined to use sexism as an excuse when one be criticized.
Indeed, the Anglo-Saxon's famed tendency for politeness might very well be a contributing factor, if again, it truly be the case that it is so common for sexism to be used as an excuse when criticism be leveled.
> I'm leaving this comment in hopes of being personally helpful to you as an individual and it's probably foolish for me to do so. It would probably be better for me to say nothing, but it's just kind of a pet peeve of mine so to speak, so I am doing it anyway.
You are free to do so, and I am free to disagree and point out the opposite.
From my perspective, it comes across as a petulant child who excessively and unreasonably talks about a culture that is failing, but lashes out defensively when an outsider chimes in and says “It might be bad, but I'm not sure it's as bad as you claim.”, for then it is an outsider who does so, and apparently that crosses the line, not the dismissal in and of itself.
That's basically a personal attack.
I'm not someone who downvoted you and my above remark was my first reply to you.
Have a good day.
When I said it was sort of a pet peeve of mine, that perhaps sounds like I meant I was criticizing you and that's really not what I meant. I meant it aggravates me to see someone post in good faith, get downvoted to hell until they seem to be pissed off and no one will reach out to them and say "This doesn't work well on this forum for this reason."
I occasionally do try to make that effort in part because I'm a demographic outlier so I don't readily fit in here and have always had to really work at it and I sometimes get a lot of downvotes for what seems to be simply being a different demographic.
This forum skews culturally American to some degree. There do seem to be a fair number of Dutch members who post, but it is run by an American company and that helps shape the dominant culture here.
I'm American but I'm a former military wife. Like the Dutch, I tend to be pretty blunt.
Some people find me to be refreshingly direct. Others find me to be rude, crude and socially unacceptable. It seems to have little to do with my behavior and more to do with their cultural expectations.
I was only trying to tell you your bluntness will tend to be interpreted by most Americans as rudeness and disrespect, though some people with military experience will be more tolerant.
It's always a risk to say something to a total stranger and that's likely why it's common for someone to get downvoted to hell and no one tries to talk to them about that in some kind of helpful fashion: Because it can get misinterpreted and make the problem worse and make you a target of their ire.
I don't really care. I tend to do what makes sense to me and accept that sometimes it bites me in the ass.
Unlike a lot of people, I don't have to sit around justifying my guilty conscience. I don't have one. I don't stand idly by and say "Not my problem."
I'm sorry this didn't go well. I don't intend to discuss it with you further. If your take away from this is that I attacked you rather than that I was trying to reach out and bridge the cultural barrier you will face on HN, welp, you win some, you lose some.
Have a great day. Sincerely.
So if a Brit/American wants to insult you they'll do it politely/obliquely, the flipside being that politeness can often be misinterpreted as an insult. That won't happen with the Dutch, because if they want to insult you they'll just insult you directly. Is that what you mean? If so - haha, v interesting!
They call it Dutch superiority because they are superior. I immigrated from the United States, and I would never go back at this point. People are still people here, but society functions, and that is because people are critical. Education is better, family relationships are better, infrastructure is better, treatment of the poor and less fortunate is better. And OP is right in that you clammed up, in precisely the way the article describes, at the slightest criticism of Anglo-Saxon culture, despite the fact that you have been describing just how much you dislike said culture in your voluminous comments.
My advice is to start being critical if you want your culture to survive. We really do see how silly you all are, and it is really more sad than anything. Fijne dag!
You will find many of the benefits of which you speak in other Anglo-Saxon nations such as Canada as well. In fact, Canada ranks far higher than the Netherlands in social mobility indices, and social mobility in the Netherlands is not very high compared to other developed nations, only average, but social mobility is very low in the U.S.A..
The arguments you raised here were not of anything that was spoken of in this discussion, but of how much less capitalist the Netherlands is than the U.S.A., which would similarly apply to any other developed nations.
The topic spoke of gender relationships, which is entirely unrelated, and I remain that I'm sceptical that it's truly as bad as claimed, for I have seen as many anecdotes that point to the opposite from Anglo-Saxons.
But yes, I have seen many an Anglo-Saxon rant on the internet that speaks of a ridiculous, dystopian doom scenario in Anglo-Saxon gender relationships, where the male cannot walk outside with his own children alone, lest he be arrested on the spot for child abduction, and the female cannot buy his own automative vehicle, for the salesman would first ask for permission of a male relative ere he be allowed to do so. — these stories seem very exaggerated, but I have certainly read stories that go to this length.
I have also read counter anecdotes that claim that there is no real problem, and that much of it seems to be outright whining of how bad it is for the home team makes me sceptical that gender relationships are truly as bad as they claim in the Anglo-Saxon world. What I do think is perhaps the big problem is the tribalist nature and tensions, and how quickly people see ghosts, and complain on being mistreated on their tribe. The Anglo-Saxon seems to very often be a team player by nature, an be quick to shout sexism or racism, when other factors might be at play.
I would personally never live in Canada either. As someone who can say from experience what this culture is really like, I tend to agree with the dystopian doom scenario and that entails all of North America. Try it for yourself if you like.
You really cannot speak your mind with a female coworker in the United States. My guard is fully up because I have experienced numerous difficulties with "just being myself" that have never caused issues here. Threatening to go to HR to get one's way is something that I have experienced personally and seen multiple times with peers, and the men never win. However, this is in the context of startup/tech culture, and it is a worse problem in this area.
In relationships, they know that they can always take the children. The government/society fully supports them regardless of the circumstances. A big female content creator in the U.S., neekolul, went on twitter to trash her ex-husband despite the fact that she was tried and convicted of felony domestic violence for stabbing him during a fight, but her fellow female content creators shrugged and supported her anyway. It's the most horrible example of many, but the point is, it's real. The people who don't believe it are delusional or have an abusive partner themselves.
I'm curious. Do you have any colleagues from the UK or from southern Europe? How do you treat them? I am similarly guarded with women from these places, although not nearly as much as I felt I had to be in the United States.
Perhaps, but this is a different matter to how the poor are treated, wouldn't you say?
Do you feel that Canada also treats the poor poorly? or that it has merely also inherited Anglo-Saxon gender chivalry? As I'm sceptical of the former, but not the latter.
> In relationships, they know that they can always take the children. The government/society fully supports them regardless of the circumstances. A big female content creator in the U.S., neekolul, went on twitter to trash her ex-husband despite the fact that she was tried and convicted of felony domestic violence for stabbing him during a fight, but her fellow female content creators shrugged and supported her anyway. It's the most horrible example of many, but the point is, it's real. The people who don't believe it are delusional or have an abusive partner themselves.
Well, these would indeed be some of the doomsday stories of tribalism and gender relationships I often hear of Anglo-Saxon culture where everyone has decided who is right and who is wrong based on little more than “What team do you play for?”, that I have never experienced in the Netherlands.
But, then again, such stories, as in this case, seem to once again come from a team, and are anecdotal, so perhaps exaggerated. The other team frequently paints a doomsday scenario in the opposite direction, of which I am as sceptical as I am of this one due to it.
> I'm curious. Do you have any colleagues from the UK or from southern Europe? How do you treat them? I am similarly guarded with women from these places, although not nearly as much as I felt I had to be in the United States.
None that spent their formative years outside of the Netherlands, no.
The one very mild experience I had in life with someone who did seem to on some level believe in “gender relations” was indeed with a friend of mine who had Finnish parents, and was born in the U.K. but lived in the Netherlands since four years old and spoke Dutch accentlessly. Perhaps it's a coincidence that this is the one person who had such perspectives, but perhaps it isn't; it does make one wonder that the one person happened to be a natal foreigner, but his foreign ancestry was seldom something that came up.
There were certainly not gendered excuses or accusations of sexism, but there were sometimes remarks in the vein of “Are you even aware of that I'm female in how you treat me?”, at least initially, after which it mostly went away.
Bluntly, I am skeptical that the Dutch are any better at belaying their subjective biases than any other culture--anglo, asian, or otherwise. You may believe you are simply bluntly stating a truth as you see it, but the reality is that you are displaying your own blinders (and comically acting superior while doing so).
Your culture produced Pim and Geert: bluntly, it's hilarious that you think you're stating any truth, here.
An how would this claim be attacked by this passage:
> Yes, and I'm sure the Dutch robotically compute such numbers, and there is rarely or never any subjectivity in their decision making that is justified ex post facto by clever accounting.
How the numbers are derived is completely unrelated to how large the role they play is.
> The claim can be technically true, in that laws or cultural norms might require an employer to put numbers to paper to justify a promotion or termination (for example), while at the same time being misleading, in that the numbers can easily be used as an ex post facto justification.
So you aren't attacking the claim itself; you're merely saying that the claim is misleading.
> Bluntly, I am skeptical that the Dutch are any better at belaying their subjective biases than any other culture--anglo, asian, or otherwise.
Perhaps you are, but again, I never said anything of the sort, so I'm again pointing to that you are attacking a straw man.
As an side-note. I am sceptical of the existence of such a thing as “Asian culture.”; — I personally find that Chinese culture is further removed from, say, Japanese culture, than Japanese culture is from, say, English culture, especially after the cultural revolution in China. — I have viewed several cultural indicies which attempt to numerically classify various properties of various cultures and they do indeed tend to place Japan closer to England than to China in many respects.
> Your culture produced Pim and Geert: bluntly, it's hilarious that you think you're stating any truth, here.
None of which has anything to do with anything I said.
I find your claim that you aren't attacking straw men to be even more mystifying if you think this is an argument against what I said. This is an argument of the level of “If evolution be true? then how come atheists couldn't stop 9/11?”. — this is an absolutely bizarre connexion you made here of two completely unrelated matters.
It is not, actually; it's fundamentally important. Your claim is in two parts: 1) numbers play a larger role in this context in Dutch society; 2) this is a direct cause of lower/non-existent incidence of, e.g., accusations of sexism.
I'm only suggesting that it's terribly easy for someone to use numbers to justify after the fact a decision based on sexism, and that I'm skeptical this condition is absent in Dutch culture.
> So you aren't attacking the claim itself; you're merely saying that the claim is misleading.
No, I'm not calling the claim misleading, I noted that the numbers used to justify a decision can be misleading (which is, in fact, a direct attack against your claim).
We won’t progress as a society by being afraid.
Yeah, that's some great parenting... </Sarcasm>
Great parenting! /s
Thank God you weren’t leading the civil rights movement.
Capitulation is a much greater enemy than anything you’re afraid of.
That's why the Soviets failed, their incentive system totally doesn't work for majority of the individuals. Individuals are not to fault here as in there.
Longer term though, I'd make sure we hire female investors into my VC fund. I'd take them along the journey of investing with this startup, and if I felt a female CEO needed to be replaced with a man, I'd discuss this with my investment partners. Any harsh feedback, if given, would be coming from all of us, and a mixed panel would be harder to accuse of sexism.
Nope, a hostile founder/CEO will pick the men out of the panel and sick the mob on them. The women on the panel are either oppressed or anti-feminism. The mob doesn't care and won't hear the whole story.
"internalized misogyny" is the term you are looking for.
That's not how this works. People eager to engage in this kind of ideological battle always have Internalised Misogyny as an argument to fall back on in this situation.
Do you believe that people should take potentially career-ending risks to benefit you?
But I believe I shouldn't have to literally starve and be homeless for years for the crime of being born with girl bits between my legs, which is more or less part of my back story here.
I believe my gender is a factor in that failing to become what I desired. Every single time I comment on that, without fail, someone acts like I am utterly full of shit and I get really awful and dismissive replies that completely fail to acknowledge that maybe I have a point and maybe my gender actually was a factor in my low income. (And still is.)
Polishing resumes and website work don't sound like highly paid jobs, regardless of your ranking on HN. This is probably bigger issue then your gender in your income.
But the issue is that I get told, both implicitly and explicitly, that my gender isn't really an issue at all. Even your comment basically hand waves off my gender as a factor.
I appear to be the highest ranked woman on HN. I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board.
I don't even need that much income. If I could just get enough resume work, I would be content to do resume work part-time at $50/page. That would work for me and I can't even arrange that.
I believe my gender is a factor in my failure to adequately meet my financial needs. It is not at all constructive for people to keep telling me the many, many other reasons I am poor as a means to implicitly say "Sure, sexism is a factor, but it's not the only factor, so quit pointing it out because it makes the guys uncomfortable."
That practice is exactly why so many women (people of color, etc) are so very angry. If people would simply acknowledge that my gender is actually something complicating my efforts to network and establish an adequate income and then spend time wondering what would work for me instead of dismissing it as "not the real reason" I'm poor, I would probably be okay financially.
I'm not asking to get rich overnight here.
My point is that if you have low income, it would be better to focus on improving skills you are offering rather than try to solve "women are paid less" problem. For example, just presenting yourself as a website builder sounds more profitable than someone who edits resumes.
By the way is HN rank really that useful? For example I never knew there is a HN leader board or how to access it.
Thank you for the explanation, I wish you all the best.
I don't present myself on HN as "a website builder" because I do little plug and play websites (blogspot, wordpress) and I'm not really a programmer. My knowledge of how to build a useful website is potentially of value to people in the small town I live in where local talent is sorely lacking. It's not anything people on HN are likely to want to hire me for.
I'm amazingly, desperately tired of discussing this. Thank you for acknowledging my point. I don't really want to dig into things like the value of HN rank further. It doesn't do a helluva lot of good.
I bring it up to make the point that "If I am doing it wrong, show me the woman that is supposedly doing it right so I can take pointers from her." and that seems to not be what anyone ever hears.
I appear to be the highest ranked woman here, ergo I appear to be the woman who has most closely "mastered" successfully talking to the guys here and I remain frustrated as all hell and dirt poor. So there doesn't appear to be a good answer here.
What do you mean?
> show me the woman that is supposedly doing it right so I can take pointers from her
There are successfull women everywhere. What are you on about?
What do you mean?
I have more than 32k karma under this handle. I had like 25k karma under a previous handle. That handle appears to be the only openly female handle to have ever spent time on the HN leader board.
However I believe you can climb the wealth ladder by leveraging your status. For example, you could start a one-person firm that builds or rebrands sites for clients and advertise your firm on linkedin. It'll go viral very quickly: people there will be retweeting your posts because your case fits the narrative.
Also in my life professional and personal connections are not totally separated, as I view a person as a person. As an example helped my ex partners very significantly in their professional life (while they helped me in other ways).
I have written about it -- quite a lot over the years, in fact. I did so to manage the situation as best I could under difficult circumstances and those many posts have been pretty consistently redacted over the years.
I'm frankly really freaking tired of writing about it and don't really feel a strong desire to try to find some means to write about it as some kind of edutainment for random internet strangers, so don't hold your breath waiting for me to do a write up. That's probably not really in my best interest and I'm just amazingly exhausted with the whole thing at this point.
As I understand it, she's saying that the current "politically correct" environment is hurting women more than it helps.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of what ideology they're battling for or against, because it's destructive of what this site is supposed to be for. Curious conversation and ideological battle can't coexist any more than frisbee in a park can coexist with tank warfare. We're trying to optimize for curiosity here. Please use HN in the intended spirit from now on.
Also, most of the comments under this topic were ideological. The post itself is ideological. Ideological - where two competing ideas fight. Often ideological means moral in it's root. You don't like this? What is wrong with ideological conversations then?
I am the person who can analyse, think and articulate my conclusions, but, apparently, some positions and thoughts are not welcome here.
Apparently, everybody, you, corporations, government, society, my employer want me to be an empty headed craftsman who can talk only on technical topics and avoids social and political topics because it can be discussed by big boys only.
Sexism all the way down on both sides.
I've come to understand in life through experience there are a very thorny class of problems that I don't know of a proper name for, but have formulated my own concept of the "non-native speakers dilemma". It goes as follows:
You're on a bus and while listening to two strangers conversing you realise you can't quite understand what they're talking about. As a native speaker you feel perfectly confident that you know the language and you are simply missing context shared only by the individuals talking and hence it isn't possible for you to understand the conversation, and not because you don't know the language. If you are a non-native speaker, and depending on your level, you often start to doubt your abilities, and can never be fully sure if you simply don't understand because you're missing context that's not possible for you to obtain or there are gaps in your language skills that still need to be filled.
I had this realisation on the bus about a decade ago when learning Japanese. But I've often thought back to it in certain situations and these kind in particular seem to crop up a lot.
One example I overheard was a female engineer talking to another female non-engineer outside their workplace just about their experiences in their jobs. I heard the female engineer remark something along the lines of "the Architect often shoots down my ideas because I'm female".
I sat thinking to myself... That's interesting because the architect shoots down my ideas too (different workplace, so I don't _know_ her situation) but it's certainly not because I'm female, because I'm not female, but it's probably because I'm an intermediate level Dev with lots to learn and the idea has some flaws in it that he can see that I can't.
In this case I'm a "native speaker" so to speak, so I can be perfectly confident my thinking is accurate with respect to the reason why it's getting rejected. The female engineer is the so called "non-native speaker" where this pernicious dynamic exists making it nigh on impossible to confident that your assessment is accurate.
Curious if that metaphor makes sense to others, or if others ever noticed the same thing?
I sat thinking to myself... That's interesting because the architect shoots down my ideas too (different workplace, so I don't _know_ her situation) but it's certainly not because I'm female, because I'm not female, but it's probably because I'm an intermediate level Dev with lots to learn and the idea has some flaws in it that he can see that I can't.
One of the really good things for me about hanging on HN is hearing "X happens to me too as a man because (reasons) and has nothing to do with gender." That's been enormously helpful to me in trying to find a path forward in my own life.
I hope you get constructive engagement of your points. I don't like the characterization that it's sexism on both sides but that's not intended to be a big attack or something. I think we don't have good language for talking about these issues that acknowledge in a non-blamey fashion that "Gender is, in fact, a factor in outcomes and it's complicated."
So far, we mostly do a sucky job of trying to discuss this at all. It ends up being people on both sides pointing fingers and even if you are bending over backwards to not point fingers, it will get interpreted as such by a lot of people and that tends to go bad places, not good.
Yes things can be improved. But at some point will critical thinking and the benefit of the doubt be encouraged in society?
Or are we doomed to the media/twitter blowing up things out of proportion and people looking through prisms of victimhood.
I don't self identify as a feminist. I never have. I generally agree with this criticism.
Here's a link to the website for The Red Pill, a documentary by a feminist who talked to men's rights activists. You may not agree with the subjects of the documentary, but the perspective is interesting, and was interesting to the feminist filmmaker who created it.
I guarantee whoever flagged me for recommending it did not watch it himself (yes, it was a dude)
http://theredpillmovie.com/
If all you’ve been doing is fighting for your damn life as a group, then this will define your character until new types of challenges balance out your origins. This is true for a lot of groups that have consistent struggle. I cannot fault them for being combative.
Was the architect dismissive of my ideas because I am a woman? Because he shoots down everyone’s ideas? Because he has a specific problem with me? Because my ideas are bad?
One of the greatest challenges I had to overcome in my career was not reading too much into the actions of others. When you do you can easily be offended by everything.
It's incredibly hard to keep having an open mind, keep trying to figure out "Is this actually constructive criticism or toxic bullshit?" and keep trying to engage in good faith in the face of certain patterns. It's just exhausting. It takes all your time and mental and emotional energy to try to sort it out, which detracts from putting energy into things that will actually advance your career.
You can spend hours and hours wondering "What did he mean by that?" in an exchange that lasted under a minute. And you may never figure it out.
It's vastly easier to just start erring on the side of "You're all just sexist pigs!" Though, unfortunately, that seems to make the problem more intractable and unresolvable, but it makes is a little easier on a day-to-day basis to cope in the face of a situation that is inherently excessively hard to parse and navigate.
So if we lived in a world were the concept of sexism was not as well developed as it is now, at least here in the US, you wouldn't have this internal conflict? Is this not enough reason to not engage in discussion and encourage others (presumably women) not to engage in behavior that keeps sexism at the very forefront of thought?
That's basically a personal attack.
I tend to get more attention and engagement for certain topics. If I am less engaged on other topics, that's partly because of "audience response," so to speak.
My first comment on HN today is this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26612921
It's about health stuff. It has two upvotes and zero replies.
I also posted this which is my writing on one of my many blogs:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26615169
It has zero upvotes and zero comments (and not because my stuff never does well -- sometimes, it does well).
I'm not pouring salt on any wounds to engage here. I go out of my way to not pour salt on wounds.
It's an inherently hard problem to solve. My failure to readily solve it is not because I'm not trying hard enough or something.
You can infer that I am handling it pretty darn well based on my cumulative karma here and the fact that I haven't been banned (at least not yet).
When you said above:
> "Is this actually constructive criticism or toxic bullshit?" and keep trying to engage in good faith in the face of certain patterns. It's just exhausting
I'm not sure why it's hard to get this rather simple point across, but what I'm trying to say is the fact that you engage in frequent discussion about sexism may have something to do with it being at the forefront of your thought and the source of your struggle in deciding if something is out of good faith criticism or "toxic bullshit".
I talk about sexism because it comes up. I talk about sexism because it is pertinent to my life. I talk about sexism because I happen to be online and have nothing better to do because the thing my life revolves around is coping with my medical situation. [2]
I overall have a really positive opinion of HN which is why I spend so much time here. There seems to be no good way to express that and also state clearly "But I still need more income anyway, even though I don't hate everyone here."
Wherever you go, there you are.
I am likely the highest ranked woman here because literally starving and being homeless helped me heal when that isn't supposed to be possible. It's routinely drama to talk about my medical situation and I get called a liar to my face and told I'm crazy for talking about the fact that I'm getting healthier when that isn't supposed to be possible.
Hacker News is the only place on the internet where it is ever possible for me to have any kind of meaty, meaningful discussion of medical material and it has been a source of occasional one-off conversations with people with PhDs in Biology or what not who were kind enough to answer my questions in layman's terms, which has literally been lifesaving and life giving.
I don't hate HN. I do hate being desperately poor. It really sucks and I would like it to stop being a part of my life.
I'm at a point where I got the memo: Contrary to everything medical science seems to believe about my condition, semi-fasting is beneficial and will likely remain a part of my protocol for the rest of my life, even if I stop being poor. Though I only learned that because I was literally homeless and going hungry for part of most months for several years.
For most women, being homeless and going hungry would not be a literally life saving experience for them. It would be merely embittering.
So there is never any good way to talk about the fact that Hacker News literally has helped to save my life and also make the point "I would like to stop being poor." I don't want people to hear "She starved and that saved her life" and use that as some kind of bullshit justification for "Womenz should just be abused. It's better for them!"
I have very poor credibility when it comes to talking about my firsthand experience with getting healthier when the world claims that simply cannot be done. I'm in a no win situation in that regard.
Talking about sexism in the world is generally far less controversial than talking about the fact that I am getting well when that isn't supposed to be possible.
I love and adore HN. I loathe how fucking poor I am. I hate it with every fiber of my being and I would like to stop being poor and I am absolutely certain my gender is a factor in my intractable poverty.
I don't really care to engage further with you on this subject.
[1] https://witnesstodestruction.blogspot.com/p/a-pragmatic-appr...
[2] https://writepay.blogspot.com/2020/07/my-occupation.html
I don't think you're alone in having nothing better to do in life than posting here, basically anyone posting here right now has nothing better to do in their life. We have a lot more in common that you might think. I'm not saying find something better to do than posting on HN, far from it, heck I'm doing it myself right now. What I am saying is perhaps find other topics to discuss if you want to rid yourself of the curse of being constantly "exhausted" from daily interaction with people (men) in deciding if they're all being "just sexist pigs!"
> they don't want to have to contemplate altering their own behavior in some way
This is mutually exclusive from the discussion we are having so I rather not engage in this topic. My original point stands regardless of whether you think there is rampant sexism: the way to cope with it is perhaps to avoid or at least stop seeking discussions about that subject. Much like the people suffering from PTSD shouldn't be exposed to things that make them remember the events that caused their PTSD. I am not saying you have PTSD or even that the problem is in any way shape or form with you or women, I am saying avoiding the discussion of such topics may be the best game-theocratical way of improving one's wellbeing.
Certainly, I have hurt feelings. Absolutely.
But it doesn't begin to approach anything remotely resembling PTSD.
I can confidently estimate that getting healthier has averted literally millions of dollars worth of medical costs for me and my sons. I just can't talk about that here all that much because people literally call me "crazy" and a "liar" to my face about that topic.
And talking about it also makes me worry that people will use that as an excuse to continue to dismiss my complaints that my gender has proven to be a barrier to networking here and establishing an adequate income. I would like to stop being poor and I never know how to give acknowledgement to HN and the people here for their role in the downright miraculous events of my life while staying the course on saying "My gender remains a barrier to establishing an adequate income and I would like to somehow have that issue resolved."
In Star Wars, everyone focuses on Luke saying "Noooooo!!!!!!" when Darth Vader tells him "I am your father." But the stronger statement of pain in that scene is the silence with which he chooses to fall to what should be his death rather than join his father. (He doesn't die because Leia shows up to miraculously rescue him, but he takes that plunge presumably expecting to die and the statement is "Join my father or die? Give me death, thanks.")
The "loud noise" I sometimes seem to make on HN concerning sexism is the lesser pain compared to issues over which I generally remain silent here.
The whole thing is enormously complicated and there is no good means for me to adequately explain it to you here on HN while maintaining my silence on subjects that I believe other people wouldn't want me to address here.
It's not about hurt feelings, as I mentioned above, it might be helpful not to focus on such discussions not because they can cause hurt feelings, but because they can actually make your life worse in your personal and professional relationships with men. If 80% of it is "toxic bullshit" you're still missing 20% of constructive criticism coming from men where others are not. We all hope to live in a world where that 20% is 21% but until then why not optimize for receiving constructive feedback by removing any psychological barriers?
I am sorry for your other issues that you cannot talk about here but I'm not sure how that's relevant to the topic. If it's sexism you're talking about, you asserting that you're staying silent on the issue in of itself is not evidence for there being sexism. I'm not sure how to continue this discussion.
This isn't actually a conversation I want to be having. I've already said that once. I've chosen to engage with you because I don't think you are being a jerk. I think your desire to be helpful is sincere and your point of view is reasonable, given what you likely know about me and my relationship to HN.
What I'm trying to tell you is that your conclusions are ill informed through no fault of your own. There are things about which I am consistently silent on HN and that's a conscious and strategic choice and it grows out of circumstances that involve other people, not just me.
For that reason, I don't feel free to simply "explain it to you like you are five" as they say. Doing so would likely violate HN guidelines, violate the privacy of multiple other people and probably just make my problems worse, not better.
So my continued silence is in some sense something I feel compelled to maintain and not really something I feel in a position to choose otherwise about. If other people wish to break their silence for my benefit, that's on them and I have no control over that.
So far, other parties have consistently chosen to err on the side of continued silence (which sometimes feels to me like "covering their asses at my expense," but it's arguably a lot more complicated than that) and it's not something I can remedy by calling them out.
It's also not something I care to call them out on in public because the most pertinent parties have generally proven to be of better character than most of the world and there is nothing to be gained by besmirching their public reputation and giving people an easy scapegoat to focus on. The result would be that 5 million people who are more or less equally guilty of essentially sexist behavior would have a short list of people to pin it on and those people would be harmed without my problems actually being remedied.
"It sucks to be me" as they say. But it's also really, really complicated and has helped save my life -- literally.
I would be thrilled to pieces to discontinue this conversation. Continuing to allude to things I am normally silent on is potentially not in my best interest.
Have a good evening. Please don't be angry if I simply stop replying. It's really not a conversation I wish to continue and I'm very sympathetic to what you are trying to do here and why you likely see things the way you see them, but you simply aren't really in possession of the all facts and I am in no position to remedy that matter and enlighten you.
I'll just say that whenever I see you comment on posts on this topic, I pay attention. I tend to switch accounts every so often as well, so I have several years of doing so under my belt at this point.
I don't always agree with you, but I've learned a lot from your comments and am confident that you're making from from a place of open desire to share your perspective and learn of the perspectives of others.
Please don't stop because someone doesn't "get it" :)
For example, an enormous amount of misunderstanding, bad communication and fraught decision making has resulted from the social activist redefinition of “racism” that has gained prominence in the last decade or so. And there are still so many people talking past each other completely obliviously. A richer taxonomy of terms and ideas could help everyone reach understanding.
It seems like the same dynamic as you’re describing in these dialogues on sexism.
Intentionally misunderstanding is a tool for accomplishing that goal.
I was interested to note something in the hiring page for the company wiki where I worked once.
It said the biggest red flag, an automatic no-hire, was a candidate confidently "explaining" things he didn't actually know. This was a big enough problem to be called out in the hiring policy. Interviewers were on notice to watch out for candidates who claimed to know something, but whose explanations were pure bluffing. Happens all the time.
The feminist literature, of course, refers to this as "mansplaining", except that mansplaining by definition refers to an explanation delivered to a woman. How is it different from the ordinary behavior? Well, it isn't.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613161
I don't think I ever accuse anyone of "mansplaining" because I don't think that's likely to be helpful in remedying the problem. But I do think the use case that men can be oblivious to the stuff women are dealing with and can kind of pick on women and can then act like she's just not trying hard enough or something if she doesn't jump on his suggestion as a brilliant solution is a common enough occurrence that it isn't unreasonable for there to be a word specifically for that pattern.
It's a word useful to kvetch to allies about it happening. It's not a word useful to build bridges, explain to the people doing it why their random unsolicited advice to a woman can be actively harmful, etc.
Edit: And I am not trying to pick a fight with you or something. I do realize the context here is you are probably agreeing with me in some fashion. (Turns out I'm still not perfect and I apologize if this reads as fighty. It's not intended to be.)
Some situations were clear to me that I was being treated a particular way because of my race. But then others were not so clear cut.
For example, one time I was talking in Japanese with a group and someone kept repeating what I said like "He said...". I was getting angry at that as I took it to mean that they were basically "translating" my Japanese for others. But then later, I was watching a Japanese TV drama and the same thing happened on there (with only Japanese speaking). That made me think that maybe this was just a cultural thing that people do and didn't have any reflection on me personally.
Having mentored a female engineer, I've seen that if you are constantly on the lookout for signs of discrimination against you, you will find so much of it. You'll go crazy thinking the whole world is out to get you because of your sex, race, etc. It's tough because there are no doubt situations where that does happen. But there are also situations where a white man would have been given the same feedback or treated in the same way. As a minority though, you only have your own experience to go on. It becomes tough to recognize what is legitimate discrimination vs what is just ordinarily communication.
Instead my head is somewhere else entirely, and I might have been annoyed at myself for forgetting to pick something up at the store or whatever.
We've gotten better at handling it, I try to remind myself to immediately tell her it wasn't her, and she asking me what it was if I forget. But there has been a lot of unnecessary bad times that originated from such episodes...
This is not uncommon for men or woman to do, and more commonly expressed as ‘you are looking for things to point out’.
You can run your own little test. Convert the sigh to something similar like shrugging. Consider it debugging with console.logs until you find out the source of the bug.
One of the best pieces of career advice I have ever taken was from this TED talk: https://youtu.be/KzSAFJBLyn4
The section on Abraham Lincoln. Perceive no slights. It changed the way I approach people at work.
For those perceived as belonging to a privileged class, people feel free to (and in some cases relish in and are socially rewarded for) voicing their sexist opinions. A man has a lot less reason to dwell on whether a particular interaction was sexist against them, because when it does happen it is often overt.
I posit that it wouldn't have gotten so crazy overvalued if it hadn't been headed by a pretty young woman. But trying to explain that is probably "off topic" and just thinking about trying to explain it makes me tired. I'd rather not.
I didn't pay too close attention to the story. If they had managed to produce the tech they claimed for the price they claimed, would $10 billion be crazy overvalued?
The issue is this: Would a man have gotten a $10 billion valuation based on hot air and zero results for years and years? Or would someone have called him on his shit a lot earlier?
She was literally sleeping with and living with a much older male investor* while publicly claiming to be celibate in her twenties due to her extreme devotion to her career and business. I always figured that was bullshit and she was probably sleeping with someone and "I'm celibate" was probably a cover story.
And no one went looking for that because of fear of being called sexist, I guess. I hesitated to give that opinion on HN for fear of back lash.
But as a woman with six year of college and yadda, when I meet accomplished men in positions to open doors for me, a lot of them find me attractive and this actively closes doors in my face. I'm not willing to sleep with a man to open doors, not because I have some kind of moral objection to that but because I don't believe it actually works.
It didn't actually work for Elizabeth Holmes. Sleeping with an investor did not, in fact, help her succeed in the world of business. It merely helped her cover up fraud while her problems grew larger until it resulted in both criminal and civil suits and her name is mud. She will never really recover from this debacle.
So I don't think sleeping with men to open doors works. I think sleeping with rich and powerful men would get me sex and maybe would let me be a "kept woman" but it wouldn't get me taken seriously as a business woman and it wouldn't teach me how business is done and it wouldn't have some men giving me meaty, constructive feedback.
* Edit: To be crystal clear here, I mean someone who invested in Theranos, I don't mean "Someone whose job title was investor." This was a clear conflict of interest.
I thought this was interesting. Do you mean "it closes doors because they are only prepared to help you if you sleep with them"? Or "it closes doors because they're scared to help you in case you misinterpret it"?
So men who are attracted to me are damned if they do, damned if they don't.
And I can't trust their motives. Are they helping me because they think I'm smart and talented and a good fit for a project? Or are they helping me hoping it leads to sex?
In practice, they usually don't make any effort to help me professionally anyway. Once they decide I'm attractive, in their minds the relationship is strictly personal and not professional. Period.
My experience has been men consistently decide early whether this is a platonic/professional relationship or a potential romantic interest. If I'm a potential romantic interest, I'm basically dead to them professionally.
They also tend to only think about how this impacts their career, not mine.
When I had a corporate job, one senior programmer in the IT department asked me for a date. In five years working there, he was the only person I met who knew what GIS was without me having to explain it. (I have a certificate in GIS.)
He interpreted that as "We have things in common and she's hot." He did not wonder if I might be an asset to the IT department. He did not wonder if I wanted a job in the IT department.
I did, in fact, want a job in the IT department. Being asked out by him did nothing to hurt his career. He was doing nothing wrong.
I'm sure he stopped to consider that. I'm sure he stopped to check that asking me out was not a fire-able offense.
He likely did not wonder how it impacted my career at the company. It made it vastly less likely I would ever get a job in his department.
This was true whether I said "yes" or "no." Simply being asked for a date, regardless of how that went personally, made it vastly less likely I would ever get into the IT department.
I left the company a few weeks later. I likely would have left anyway and had been planning to do so for some time, but him asking me for a date was something of a final nail in the coffin, killing all hope that I had a shot at a real future at the company.
I didn't. That simply was a non starter.
So it made it easier to pull the trigger on plans to leave.
>This was true whether I said "yes" or "no." Simply being asked for a date, regardless of how that went personally, made it vastly less likely I would ever get into the IT department.
Speaking from outside the tech bubble, that sounds nuts - I mean the situation, not your interpretation of it. How can being asked on a date mean you can't work in the asker's department?
It was a big company. You could date and marry coworkers but you couldn't date someone in your chain of command.
I didn't know the internal structure of the IT department, but if he was high enough in the chain of command, there would be many positions below him. I had an entry level job. Transferring from an entry level job in a different department would have meant I would be getting an entry level job in IT.
I was having trouble figuring out how to get a different job in the company as is. I was having trouble finding the kind of info I wanted that was pertinent to me and having trouble understanding the internal job listings.
Adding the possibility that someone had just asked me out who was high enough in the department I wanted to get into that many of the jobs that might interest me would make him my boss made it overwhelmingly difficult to try to navigate the process of transferring into IT.
As I said, I already had plans to leave for unrelated reasons. Had I stayed, maybe I would have eventually drawn different conclusions and found a path forward.
But based on the info I had, my emotional reaction was "Welp, I can stop fretting about whether or not I'm doing the right thing by leaving. I'm basically going nowhere fast at this company."
Adam Neumann?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Neumann
Yes, but in the same way that a company that promises faster-than-light travel would be worth $10 billion dollars.
Theranos' tech was so far beyond the realms of any reasonable science, yet people still invested.
But hey, I'm a sexist, racist homophobe who wanted to bring down a woman. Why should anyone want to listen to me when I told them she is a fraud whose only credentials are her genitals?
The words sexism/racism often get confused with discrimination.
Oxford definition of “sexism” via Google:
> prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex
The definition of sexism seems to include discrimination. What definition are you using?
So labelling anything where two genders are treated differently as 'sexism' or 'sexist' I don't think actually matches the modern usage of the word. I think the difference is it's usually used in a negative connotation and the type of discrimination is seen as non-acceptable - for instance most people wouldn't call a girl-band or boy-band sexist because they select their members based on gender, while most would call an employer sexist if they had a generic business and tried to segregate their teams into single-gender teams. Most people still don't have a problem with boy bands (i.e. a male-only-team in a music workplace), thus not sexist, but do have a problem with male-only-teams in other workplaces, thus sexist.
Enforcing a rule isn’t discrimination. The rule itself may or may not be discrimination.
> Most people still don't have a problem with boy bands (i.e. a male-only-team in a music workplace), thus not sexist, but do have a problem with male-only-teams in other workplaces, thus sexist.
They get the label “boy band” after they form. If they were a mixed gender group (like a workplace) and kicked out a talented female musician because they wanted to be male-only, that would be sexist.
Also, I hate to break the illusion for you, but boy bands are often planned as such and are manufactured by the record labels. It’s not a coincidence, for example, that the spice girls are all girls - that’s because they only auditioned girls because they were making the spice girls.
The woke reactions would be like: It’s really saying, "I don’t really see what makes you you". We want you to see the benefit of the diversity people bring to the table. Being colour-blind used to be woke, now it's whitewashing.
My comment: apparently they need the attributes to define the identity they rally around. You can't not see them anymore because it is interpreted as ignoring their identity.
That's why I stated it is a semantic discussion.
On the one hand, I think this redefining is good. Because when we talk about the problems of racism and sexism, the prevalent form of negative discrimination (so in the west, racism by white people, and sexism by males) are what we tend to mean.
On the other hand, other forms of discrimination also happen, and we need words to describe them. Racism and sexism used to describe that, but by now such describing tends to feel bad. It tends to feel like drawing an equivalence between e.g. a white person not being able to use the N-word being 'just as bad' as the oppression faced by black people in America.
I feel we need separate words for both the systemic (non intentional) oppression of people by sex and gender. And discrimination based on sex and gender in general. Originally racism and sexism used to describe the latter. Slowly we are moving towards having it mean the former, without having new words for the latter. Ideally wish we had just come up with new words for the latter. But that would have lost some of the power that comes from calling someone a racist or a sexist.
In conclusion, semantics matter, and are hard.
If that is what comes to mind when people talk about white discrimination, then there is a large disconnect in the discussion when talking about the semantic meaning of sexism and racism.
If two people apply to a university and the critical distinction why one got excluded is race, then that is a negative discrimination. If two people are accused of identifical crime and the the critical distinction why one got a harsher sentence is race, then that is negative discrimination. If two people are illegally demonstrating on the street and one get violently assaulted for doing so, and the critical distinction is race, then that is negative discrimination.
Some of that negative discrimination harms white people, some black people, some both in different circumstances, and there is many more situation where such discrimination occurs. Same in regard to gender.
It is treating people differently based on the damage that they can do to you. Generally a woman accusing you of being sexist is will do more damage than a man doing the same (not universally, but usually). So while the outcome is equivalent the decision is based on the very real threat, not the gender.
The men are assuming based on the female founder’s gender _alone_ that she might accuse him of sexism.
Regardless of how rational this fear is, they are stereotyping new female founders they’re meeting for the first time based on what an X% of other female founder’s have done in the past.
For the men, it’s probably a risk/reward calculation. Keep your head down and be polite and have ~0% chance of being accused of sexism. Or, speak up and maybe ruffle some feathers and have a ~X% chance of being accused of sexism.
You can see the problem on both sides of the equation, but withholding advice based on gender alone does meet the definition of sexism, regardless of the intentions of self-protection rather than hate.
Instead of playing semantics by saying that "it is technically sexism" (and I'm not saying I agree with whether it actually is or not), we could choose to at least stop phrasing the situation like that.
But we can't fix it by doing otherwise—asking people to stop being "overly" cautious—either. Another comment put it best: that solution is akin to asking people to self-sacrifice, except that at the very least jumping on a grenade gets you a medal; in this case, it gets you vilification.
But in any legal setting this will get shut down immediately unless there’s valid proof.
And those rumors kill careers, as TFA mentions.
> The risk is still there from the first contact to the last.
This is correct, and that's why this problem is very likely only going to get worse... And the people being cautious still won't be the ones to blame.
> But in any legal setting this will get shut down immediately
Outrage mobs don't need a legal setting to ruin someone's life (or livelihood).
I feel like we're probably not talking about the same thing.
The only way rumors kill careers is if we fear the rumors.
If everyone is giving honest, straightforward feedback, then everyone has a rumor about them and it becomes powerless.
But if most people are afraid and one person gives honest feedback and is subjected to a rumor, the one rumor seems significant.
I guess I brought up the legal stuff because I think believing rumors is silly in general. If you’re actually the subject of discrimination, you should prove it in court for the benefit of yourself and society.
I’m not sure that we’re disagreeing entirely. I do agree with what you’re saying as well. Just hoping we can chart a new path.
But this leads me back to my previous comment: this isn't a feasible solution because it means basically asking people to self-sacrifice until the "rumors" lose power.
Self-preservation and self-interest is how every single resistance has failed and capitulated.
And if you’re actually kind, fair and decent to women you will have people who rebut the rumors. A tweet against you isn’t an inevitable destruction of your career.
I think we're never going to reach an agreement so I'm cutting out.
The last thing I'll say is that there's a difference between this particular situation and historical resistances to oppression: If you were to even call this situation "oppression", it would only lead to further ridicule and ostracism, perhaps would even get most of the few people who might have sided with you to turn on you as well.
Like I said earlier; jumping on a grenade gets you a medal, the people who protested during rights movements are heroes. The ones you're calling now to self-sacrifice would very likely be considered "some more toxic males who finally got their just desserts".
Of course, I hope I'm wrong. In fact, I hope a better solution is found.
It is irrelevant that the majority does not actually think this way.
What is relevant is if there is a vocal minority who has power over you and your career that does. And any of the majority who steps out of line in opposition to this power structure individually gets destroyed.
You seem to be mistaking your desire for fair and righteous social dynamics for what actually is today: a Kafkaesque environment perpetuated by fear of anyone speaking up and then becoming a target for the mob and ruination.
Maybe you don't believe this, or maybe this isn't your experience, but take it from many of hundreds of commenters here, this article, or countless stories just like it that this is very real and justified fear.
This is quite literally exactly what has been happening, and it seem like it will continue happening because the loud minority has everyone else by the balls.
I think the difference for this particular case is that the people who have to stick their necks out are the people who generally don't have much to lose if the resistance fails. (Obviously this isn't the case for the larger discussion around combating sexism, where individual women bear the brunt of the risk, but for this particular advice-giving bit, it is.)
This is very naïve. For this to work, either people would have to be omniscient, or some karmic mechanism is ensuring that "justice always prevails." Let me assure you that neither is the case. I know this, because being different and being a minority, in various times and places, was enough pretext to let people attach falsehoods to you, and have it widely believed. We know this from false accusations in the Jim Crow US south. I know such things from my personal experience.
However, those mechanisms aren't the only ones. No-one is completely immune from such accusations, except for fleeting periods of extreme popularity and societal goodwill. A lie will get seven times around the world, before the truth laces its boots. This, too, I know from personal experience.
The question is this: Do we want mob mentality to be the arbiter of justice? Nearly a millennium of jurisprudence would firmly tell us: NO!
What's more, the mob mentality is clearly sexist! And it's the mob's sexism which is the root of the problem. On average, isn't there a much stronger mob reaction from a woman's accusation of sexism over a man's? It's this difference that gender-skews the cost/benefit calculation. This difference is itself sexist.
Justice doesn't come reliably from the mob. Instead, what we get is bias that results in more sexism. Funny that.
Question: Would we, on average, expect an outrage mob response of the same size and magnitude when a man makes such an accusation? Whether or not this is justified by historical injustice is irrelevant here. What's salient is whether or not there is a gender skew.
If there is such a systematic and large societal gender skew, then we should expect people's cost/benefit calculations regarding the exposure to the risk of such accusations to also be skewed in a way that is large, systemic, and gender unequal. In a word, the way our society works around accusations, current day in 2021, is itself highly sexist.
Therefore, if we don't want systematized sexism, then we have to eliminate gendered skew in these cost/benefit calculations. We already know the mechanisms for the way out of this. It's codified in various legal systems, and in the values of historical liberal societies and philosophies. They are called respect for evidence, innocent until proven guilty, and due process. When society applies these principles gender neutrally, the gendered skew in individual cost/benefit calculations will even out, on average. Society will have eliminated another form of sexism, and the world will be a better place.
When one says "believe women" somehow in preference to believing men, this is a contributing factor. To avoid the gendered skew, it would be obviously impractical to say, "believe everyone." Hence: respect for evidence, innocent until proven guilty, and due process. Applied gender-neutrally, this is our way out.
In short, the tremendous power we've given mobs based on accusations not-requiring evidence is itself highly sexist, and this distorts our society to also be more sexist.
You would need someone like Google CEO (with the support of the board) to say: jumping to accusations will get you in trouble. Just because it's criticism doesn't make it sexist. We don't care about your social power pseudo scientific theory and we will not settle in court. Stop making the work place toxic. Then you need to have this sentiment repeated by other powerful people.
Chances of that happening in US in coming years? In my opinion about zero.
I feel like "giving into the fear of being labeled" doesn't fully capture the risk involved. For many people that labeling means the end of their career, or at the very least a lot of personal and professional embarrassment, plus a big negative mark on their record. I have a hard time looking down on anyone too hard for giving in to that fear.
The real problem is the cancel culture. That's what needs to be fixed. A twitter mob shouldn't be able to cause as much damage as they do. There should be laws preventing people from being fired because of social media. Maybe everyone who's ever been fired or had negative career consequences due to a twitter mob should get together and bring on a massive class-action lawsuit. Force twitter to fix their toxic lynch mob problem, and let that be an example for any other social media company that wants to capitalize on harmful gossip and mob behavior.
No, the real real problem is that in while there is some behavior that is obviously $BAD and others that are obviously not $BAD, there's a large range of behavior for which it's difficult to tell whether it's $BAD or not.
Consider the criminal justice system. Some people are obviously guilty and others are obviously innocent. But in between, there are lots of situations where it's difficult to tell whether the person is guilty or not. Vow to be more "tough on crime", and innocent people spend years in jail (or worse, end up executed). Vow to protect the innocent, and lots of guilty people get away scot-free. And there are criminals who are very good at exploiting this uncertainty.
There was a very insightful essay I saw many years ago which I can't find now unfortunately; but the main point was this: In superhero comic books and movies, the real superpower is certainty. The good guys always know who the bad guys are; it's just a matter of defeating them. In the real world, we have plenty of power to defeat the bad guys; it's just not always clear who the bad guys are.
So take the example from TFA, where the investor thought male founder A would be a better CEO than female founder B. Implicit bias is a real thing, and has been proven in dozens of studies. (For instance, where people are asked to rate the qualifications of a range of CVs, where the gender of the name on the resume is randomized.) Does the investor think A is better than B because of implicit (or not-so-implicit) bias? Or is A genuinely a better fit than B? It's basically impossible to know; even the investor themself may not know.
In the past, things swung very heavily toward "let the guilty go free", which meant implicit bias was allowed to stand unchallenged (leading to more men in leadership, leading to more implicit bias). "Cancel culture" is an attempt to swing things the other way. But it falls victim to the "certainty superpower" delusion: they think they know who the actual bad guys are, and end up taking down innocent people in the process.
What's the solution? In some sense there is no solution: until we have an Oracle of All Truth which we can consult, we will always have uncertainty; which means either punishing the innocent, letting the guilty go free, or some mixture of both. The best thing we can do is honestly acknowledge the situation and try to balance things as best we can.
Incredible.
In TFA, this precise same individual did the reverse first. It is hard to argue bias, when someone worked to get a better founder, female, to be CEO...
Yet this is dropped, ignored, in your comment.
So here we see, that even those actively showing non-bias, are labelled as likely biased still?!
If people's prior actions are no longer any remote indication of bias or not, all is lost.
Decision maker still could have bias towards men or women generally, but in those two cases some other factors could outweigh this bias, even if it actually was present. No way to tell.
The article also mentions this topic, by listing some factors that may influence decision in such situation:
> The degree to which men hold back on their advice depends on 1) how much is at stake and 2) how much they trust you. For example, you’ll be much more likely to get candid advice from an investor who has invested a lot of money in your company and you’ve known for years vs. a panelist at a tech conference giving feedback onstage who doesn’t know you and hasn’t invested in your startup.
Precisely. Yet one of these two was being used as an example for unconscious gender bias.
Why were both examples not used, or conversely, one showing a bias benefiting women?
Answer: because the bias is, that all men are biased.
> Answer: because the bias is, that all men are biased.
So, in a discussion where we're discussing the possibility that women might see anti-woman bias where none exists, we have a situation where a man sees anti-man bias where none exists.
"even the investor themself may not know"
The above fragment is what really 'got to me'. I agree that some people may have an unconscious bias. Yet from a few studies, showing some have this bias?
I hear this now spoken of as gospel. As if the very fiber of the male being, is to have this bias. So to this:
"a man sees anti-man bias where none exists."
I say -- I don't think so. Because this 'unconscious bias' theory is a bias in itself. It's like claiming all women have victim mentality, or all women are 'queen bees'. It just isn't so.
Individuals will consider their jobs and thus their dependents' welfare more important than risking being publicly slaughtered to fix a mindset that's pretty ingrained now.
Well, I think that unlike women or bin-binary people, a man wouldn't be able of accusing another man of sexism in his direction.
Regardless, we’re talking about social judgements. In a legal setting the burden of proof would be on the accuser.
And like many legal outcomes, just being accused is its own stigma. Someone accused of murder but then later (let's say objectively, truthfully, correctly) found not guilty will expect to face social discrimination and alienation. It's not right, but it's unfortunately how people operate.
Without an explanation about which parts people find disagreeable, assuming thats how people are even using the voting system here, I have no idea what the real world consensus is or what they wish for it to be
You made this comment hours and hours ago. Yet in that time, 'what is grey' has changed. Things have been voted up and down. And who's to say that 5 years from now, 10 years, the 'web theme' of this site won't change.
And then grey means something else.
Now what you've said has changed, due to how the 'culture' on this site has changed.
Meanwhile, there have been people examining comments, and actions, people made even decades ago. Comments and actions taken out of context, single sentences quoted out of paragraphs from emails/etc, and then social media destroys them without care.
Not only must people now 'clam up' against current threat, but all potential future threat. A comment well received by a friend, can 20 years later be taken out of context, that context being historical, cultural, and personal.
And on top of all of that, a friend can become an enemy 20 years later, for entirely non-sexist, just normal person-to-person reasons. People can and do change over time, sometimes not for the better.
So:
* fear what you say now
* fear the future, for people will misquote 20 years later
* fear even female friends, for some may change over decades, and destroy you later
I don't think this is here now. But if the perception of what is happening continues much longer, it may.
Heck, I recall reading an article which coached men to "never be alone with a woman", for "she could claim anything later". This thought process makes it highly difficult to even give advice in private!
This isn't exceptional or even new, it's been solid advice for anyone in a position of public visibility for at least the past thirty years. The same goes for being alone with teenagers: It doesn't take that much effort to have witnesses and keep the door open, especially considering what a volatile other party will do to your life if you don't.
All it takes it is for a girl to even utter ‘that guy is kind of creepy’, and boom, people will extrapolate from something as simple as that.
If the accused also have a powerful position at a company, then that company also faces large liabilities, both reputational and financial. Everyone knows that the costs of litigation in the US are astronomical.
It is less known but equally true that the costs of arbitration (and to a lesser extent, mediation) can be high. Prohibitive for a startup, still painful for a larger company. Which means that all a potential accuser needs to do to get their pound of flesh is threaten litigation, and name an amount less than what would be paid in arbitration.
So our current system, on social media and in the courts, puts a tremendous amount of power in the hands of those who might accuse. And yes, the gender _alone_, or protected minority status _alone_, is enough to set off alarm bells in an executive who has already been burned.
Not necessarily. In a social situation, you may be more afraid of what other people will think than of what that one person will think.
If that one person misreads you and hates you, it's not some big career-ending problem. It only becomes a big career-ending problem when a whole lot of other people agree that you doing X is some major issue that "obviously" was rooted in some kind of nefarious intent, such as sexism.
The problem is that the story will usually be told by the person who misunderstood the argument, and the other side's defense wouldn't have as much reach. "X is a sexist jerk" will gain way more clicks, attention and support than "I thought X was a sexist jerk but actually I misunderstood and we're all good - nothing to see here".
Furthermore nowadays there are plenty of people out there who love the drama and will be more than happy to keep pouring fuel into the fire, either for entertainment or in an attempt to virtue-signal how "better" they are by (appearing to) care about the issue. Worse, entire industries (social media) happily profit off this and encourage it by promoting the divisive content.
generally agree but have seen plenty cases on social media where the barrier to that agreement was incredibly low. I've even watched myself at times backing the wrong side -out of solidarity[1]- simply because I followed that person already for years and agreed to most of their other opinions.
[1] and what monster would not "always believe the victim"? As a proud father of a gorgeous and smart daughter I have an almost automatic response to see women's rights as something I need to protect. I'd always be harsher on my won sex when it comes to blame or "whodunit" (I'm aware of it so I'm able to counter it but no doubt that this pattern is always present like some muscle memory)
This doesn't contradict anything I've said. If anything, it reinforces it.
Even if the gender of the accuser has no effect on the probability of the person accusing someone of sexism, it has a massive effect on the probability that such accusations are believed and weaponised by the public / mainstream media.
Are they, necessarily? This could be entirely up to expected value and cost/benefit. Right now, current day, on average, the amount of power and attention wielded by a woman making an accusation of sexism is far larger than that which would be wielded by a man. This gender skew in outcome causes the cost/benefit calculations made by advice givers to also be gender-skewed. As a result, women get one cost/benefit calc, and men get another.
The problem is precisely systemic societal inequality and sexism. It's sexist to automatically value the word of one gender over that of another. However that is essentially what our society does in this context, made worse through social media's amplification of the mob mentality. It's this amplified societal gender skew which is the problem.
The way out of this is to value and respect evidence. The way out of this is due process and the concept of innocent until proven guilty. The way out is through principles which we know can counteract the evils and dysfunction of the mob, which we have known and codified, and whose value has been borne out by history, since nearly a millennium ago. Only this time, let's apply these gender neutrally.
Would you describe this person as "racist" against Russians? I don't think a reasonable person would apply that label. I think they'd say they're responding rationally to the specific circumstances of their immediate situation. That sort of behavior shows no inherent animosity to Russian people in general.
(And before anyone cries foul, I'm not in anyway saying sexism accusations in 2021 corporate America is anywhere near the same as the KGB. I think that should be patently obvious. The reason I picked this specific example was to stretch the underlying logic to a situation that's clear enough to be cut and dry situation.)
Yeah, they're making decisions and treating someone differently based on the person's (anticipated) race. Something being rational doesn't make it not racism.
> That sort of behavior shows no inherent animosity to Russian people in general.
Racism has nothing to do with animosity. Consider that men have the opposite of animosity towards women and yet sexism is something between humans.
That's the really tricky part with racism, not the mindless extremism. What is the acceptable limit between rationalism and racism? Is there one? If we take the example of the GP with Russian secret services, if 99% of the Russian speaking people you encounter are from the secret services, does it make it acceptable to discriminate against the 1% to save your life? If yes, then what is the limit? 50%, 10%, just one person, ...?
No court. No sensible attempts to truly examine the truth. Just a firing squad.
In this context, even "Good" Russians, fear the "Bad" Russians, for they may be labelled 'collaborators', and face the firing squad too.
What the actual fuck? Did you read the context? Hungary in 1956: they would fear those Russians!
If you aren't an enemy of feminism you have nothing to fear against female founders and can speak to them openly.
I really don't know how to make this any more clear to you, you almost there. And now think an inch further...
Our hypothetical clam doesn't know that the speaker is in the KGB or equivalent. They're stereotyping based on rumours, ethnicity and background. It doesn't matter that they are behaving prudently, it is pretty clear-cut that they are making decisions based on the racial and ethnic stereotypes they know.
I'm the bearer of bad news here. Sometimes racism is a rational response. Strive to make it not so.
With female its the potential unknown predictability that causes the fear.
The fact that the wolves would be out regardless of the veracity of the claims, and that there is no viable avenue for recourse here aggravates this.
Wrapping this up as "sexism" is the same kind of logic that gets you the removal of women-only sports as "sexism".
Even the law, which is usually the last to evolve, clearly understands the difference between a death caused by self defense and murder.
2. Advice (which is essentially a gift of knowledge/experience) is not something you are entitled to by virtue of your sex.
3. A man cannot be said to be 'sexist' when he chooses not to give advice that could potentially incriminate him, especially falsely. If a person (whether a man or a woman) chooses to keep silent, and especially where no fraudulent aspect is involved, that is part and parcel of doing business. You are not entitled to call a person 'sexist' just because they do not want to give advice to you.
4. There are virtually no consequences to the woman who accuses. Yet in comparison, the long-lasting consequences of an investor being falsely accused in public far outweigh any advantages to the contrary. This is enough to make any man clam up, and is a legitimate cause to withhold advice.
5. More importantly, in a commercial setting, no one is obliged to give you an advantage just because you're a woman. If you expect such an advantage/benefit because of your gender, then you are being sexist. A woman who wants to do business should not posit that a man is actively being 'sexist' if he chooses not to help her. That makes no sense.
So, women are being segregated before having any occasion to accuse men of sexism, and yet you claim that they would face 'no consequences' if they actually did?
Men are refusing to giving advice, because there is past history of women falsely accusing them of being sexist when they do give it. Your claim purporting that it never happens - i.e. 'before having any occasion' - skews the time-perspective. And is against the odds that male investors have faced, which is why they now clam up.
This is nothing to do with 'segregation' - that's a silly interpretation on your part. Investors are wising up to hold their tongue, than to let aspersions be (falsely) cast upon them otherwise.
Risk is the combination of chance of occurence with effect. If the effect is large then a tiny chance is worth making active protections against.
Given what we've seen in the past few years and how such incidents appear to be on the increase, the chance doesn't even seem that tiny.
Let's draw a parallel. Most people would consider crossing the street because there is a black man walking towards you as a racist action. Sure, not burning a cross in their lawn racist, but racist nonetheless (it's a spectrum). I would argue that people that do this do so because they are afraid of said black person. Yes, their action is caused by fear, but their fear is caused by racism (i.e. they view a black person as being more likely to be dangerous than a person of another race).
Looping back, I believe you are right that these decisions are fear based, but it is fear that women are out to get you, which is the sexist part. In reality it does not appear that women are more out to get you than men are. Though we likely have a perception bias that they are because of social media. There's the double edged sword of awareness. It can help you solve a problem but it can also increase the problem because it can make you blind to the root issues.
I think this brings us to problems with social media or more precisely sensationalism (which is amplified in social media but far from the only platform that encourages this). These cases are more visible and gives us a selection bias. But I guess we have to encourage good faith discussions (which is a rule on HN btw) through media, which is rather difficult to do at a cultural level. And we don't want to entirely kill sensationalism either because topics going viral has a lot of utility (such as that more women are being open about the abuse that they've received. Yes, this does lead to a higher number of false accusations, but they still are a very small percentage of accusations). It's a really difficult problem but I think encouraging good faith arguments, being kind to one another, patience, and allowing for mistakes are a necessary step to be able to solve this entire issue (which I'm not going to pretend to have real answers). Particularly I think the last component is essential because we need to recognize that not everyone learns the same lessons. If we're going to say things like "everyone is racist" or "everyone is sexist" we have to also allow people to safely make mistakes and importantly be given the opportunity change/fix their behavior. I personally believe if people are not given this opportunity they double down on their ways. It is a coping mechanism because no one wants to be the bad guy.
So no, you aren't damned if you do and damned if you don't.
I interpret it like this: On the one hand, there are people (many of whom with good intentions) instantly assuming that any criticism a man might give to a woman is rooted in sexism, to wit, what TFA mentions that investors are cautious about. On the other hand, there are people, also with good intentions, saying that "men being cautious in what they say to women" is also sexism.
Now, I don't know the solution either, but I do believe that a good first step would be not saying that people who are merely cautious (precisely not to come across as sexist) are sexist anyway.
I'm a bit confused, did I not respond in a way that recognized this? It appeared to me as a low quality response that did not actually have anything to do with my comment. I believe the comment vastly oversimplified the problem, which is part of what I'm trying to address, that the problem is complicated and we need to recognize the nuances involved and respond in good faith. To clarify, I do not think a good faith response results in
> instantly assuming that any criticism a man might give to a woman is rooted in sexism
As such a belief is itself rooted in the belief that the only criticism a man can have of a woman is that she is a woman, which I'd argue itself is sexist (and not responding in good faith). As an example we saw this during the 2016 election where people often said that anyone who criticized Clinton was doing so because she was a woman, which honestly is an extremely dehumanizing platform. While there were people criticizing her on this basis (openly and through more careful language) the claim itself positions Clinton as being infallible and thus not human, which is absurd. This is far from a good faith response because Clinton, as any human (and especially politicians/leaders), are deserving of criticism (not that you should be mean about it). So by a good faith response I would expect someone to respond to that criticism instead of accusing the other person of being sexist. But I honestly believe people making such claims are a minority, albeit with high visibility because of the sensational nature of their bad faith responses.
I didn't think it was; it seemed to me a succinct summation of what calling the behavior in TFA "sexism" leads to: Ultimately, regardless of what he does, a man will be considered sexist by someone.
Or, to put it another way, calling the cautiousness we're discussing here "sexist" can itself be considered a bad faith position.
> But I honestly believe people making such claims are a minority, albeit with high visibility because of the sensational nature of their bad faith responses.
I'm not sure what to say to this: I agree, of course, but I don't think that's the point. That minority can and has killed people's careers and thus, we have the cautious behavior mentioned in TFA.
I mean this is how I read it, but again, I thought it lacked nuance. Someone is key here and ties into how we respond to sensationalized perspectives. I'm advocating for more nuance and being more careful in interpretation. Such as not treating the term "sexist" as being a binary position. I would, and am, argue(ing) that interpreting the word as a binary classification is only detrimental. It in itself is a bad faith response. But we have a problem that "sexist" means different things to different people. While one may interpret my usage as such, I believe that there is sufficient information in my several comments that I am not using the word as such a classification (even explicitly stating so) and this is where I draw contention with the responses I'm getting.
It should be apparent that responding to me as if I am using such a binary classification will give me the impression that one simply skimmed and responded thinking "oh you're one of those people." I'm actively advocating for reducing this type of response, because I think we'd argue that binning people is far too common and leads to many of the problems (in fact, binning is the root of this entire post, thread, and conversation). This is why I'm saying that the damned if you do, damned if you don't is a false dichotomy as (as I stated in the original response) the actions are not equally as bad. It matters "how damned" someone is. My entire thesis lies in a continuum.
> That minority can and has killed people's careers and thus, we have the cautious behavior mentioned in TFA.
Maybe I can be more clear in my response to this. I am saying that how we are responding to sensationalized content is feeding into this behavior. We need tempered and thoughtful responses, not knee jerking emotional reactions (we don't have to be void from emotion). I don't think it is enough to just complain about these people, but that we are perpetuating this system by clicking, retweeting, liking, and pushing these comments into the forefront of our conversations. That minority has killed many peoples' careers (some justified some not, but we're presumably discussing the unjustified cases), but the reason these (unjustified cases) careers have been destroyed is because of public response and selection bias of what majority opinion is. As an example of this Speedy Gonzales was canceled because complaints/fear of ethnic sterotyping. But it was later brought back due to League of United Latin American Citizens noting that he was a cultural icon that was seen positively by Latin American viewers. It is a clear case of letting the minority's opinion overrule that of the majority. I believe that if we let people that are looking for problems dictate what a problem is then we'll only have a race to the bottom. I do not believe the people responding to me and downvoting would disagree, and that is where my confusion lies.
So I go back to my first reply: to stop casting people into a binary like I think we both want, better not to throw such loaded words at people and instead analyze their behavior on a case by case basis. Fighting the word itself is prescriptive at best, and language tends to be descriptive, AFAIK.
So if we're communicating with words meaning different things (which is extremely common but unnoticed) then we have to be careful that we don't lose meaning on the assumption that someone's message can only have one interpretation. We have to recognize the embedding problems and limitations of language to effectively communicate.
Any behavioral modifications would have to start from castigophobia. Remove the punishment - that's the solution. Everything else is pointless.
Removing any punishment isn't vague - just take it out of the hands of those who can currently inflict it:
1. Make it illegal to fire employees for any speech in the public square.
2. Make it so they have to be found guilty in a court of law in order to be fired or shunned for anything sexist or racist.
3. Make it so that any publicly funded institution (even partly) cannot terminate their relationships with individuals because of their speech in the past or the future.
Right now what we're seeing is extrajudicial punishment instigated at the will of anyone with a twitter account and following. The above suggestions reduce the twitter mob's leverage because they shouldn't have any to begin with. Anyone seeking damages should have to go through channels that allow some kind of defense. The court system is supposed to be systemized thoughtfulness so we should rely on it.
The way I see it playing out is that companies will force all employees off of social media with their own names or fewer people will attack companies because they know that the company can't do anything. Both cases are a positive change.
You're being optimistic about vengeful people online. I don't think you're being realistic.
> 1. Make it illegal to fire employees for any speech in the public square.
So you can't fire an employee that is causing an uproar and a subsequent boycott of your product? Because that's why they get fired now, to prevent a decrease in sales. The only way maintaining the employee and the sales is for the public to recognize that an employee (including a CEO) does not represent the company (which in a case of a CEO can be shaky). This is a tricky situation that I think you're overly simplifying.
> 2. Make it so they have to be found guilty in a court of law in order to be fired or shunned for anything sexist or racist.
I feel a bit better about this. But this lines up with my tempered approach. I think this may be a bit too light handed though. For example, it is legal to be a Neo Nazi. That is protected by free speech. But if a high level employee is openly a Neo Nazi then that's going to affect your sales.
> 3.
Same goes here.
I think these solutions are too simple that they miss the nuance I'm asking for.
> Right now what we're seeing is extrajudicial punishment instigated at the will of anyone with a twitter account and following.
This is a huge problem that I'm concerned about. But I don't see a way around it without having society act better.
Well I do see one other solution, but it has a lot of consequences too. Twitter/Facebook/etc could change their algorithms to prevent these cases from going viral. But there's big consequences to that and makes them arbiters of "*ism". That's also a dangerous situation and honestly a position I don't think Mark or Jack wants to be in.
> You're being optimistic about vengeful people online.
I'm not optimistic about them. I'm optimistic about the public. That the general public will get tired of this shit. Getting tired will cause less clicks, which will cause less rage, and momentum will dampen the system. But right now we have media resonating with this vocal minority because it brings in dollars. People still click a lot on hate porn (articles like "You won't believe how dumb {Republicans,Democrats} are" or "Watch this {Democrat,Republican} get totally destroyed!"). People are already getting sick of it, that's why we're having this discussion. So I'm saying fight by not clicking. Increase the momentum back to normality.
Do you think a slight or partial interpretation of sexism (even if misconstrued completely and therefore a false interpretation) will be treated with this nuance and proportionality you speak of by someone who wishes to publicize and cancel as described in this article?
The entire point here is that whether 9/10, or 999/1000 interactions with women go exactly or even better than interactions with men, it ONLY TAKES ONE to literally ruin your life. Get it?
Because of this, the natural defensive reaction is to avoid interactions and conflicts altogether, out of abundance of caution.
Is this sexism? Who the hell cares! Peoples livelihoods are on the line! That you would care more about your little intellectual exercises and nuanced view of the "isms" means absolutely nothing compared to putting bread on the table, or not, for most people.
One could even say this makes you privileged to even think they should care about this more than protecting themselves and supporting their families.
The people that are making these binary determinations to wield social power could not care less about the academic nuanced views everyone is discussing here in the comments. They are not acting in good faith, so reasoning with them will not work.
In my opinion, the nuance is whether the difference is truly because of gender or if gender is just something with a high correlation.
For example, if an average man says to me "give me your wallet or I'll beat you up", I'm likely to do it since I'm on the smaller side. If an average woman did that, I'd say no. So maybe it seems like sexism at first, but then I consider, if a woman threatened me who was the size and build and general risk of an average man, what would I do? I'd hand over my wallet.
> I understand the meanings of words like "sexist" and "racist" are changing and subject to opinion.
Also on this point, I think this kind of "words having different meanings to different people" is far more common than people realize and requisites more care in how we interpret others' statements. I think this is obviously true for any "ism" (sexism, racism, capitalism, socialism, etc). Pinning a definition to strictly our own interpretation ends up being naive and often leads to fighting because we have basic breakdowns in communication. We can't agree even if philosophically we agree. It should be the other way around, meaning triumphing over diction. Diction over meaning is just looking for a fight.
It didn't used to be a spectrum and it's a terrible innovation that it's viewed that way today by so many. Racist used to refer to people that believed in the inferiority and superiority of certain races. Only recently has it become socially acceptable to accuse someone of racism or sexism at any sign of prejudice. This is a major cause of the divisiveness in the culture today and if you're doing it, you're part of the problem.
When we talk about people's prejudices it causes us to examine potential solutions in a productive way. When we accuse someone of being racist or sexist, we imply that they're beyond redemption, and we can skip right to hating them and feeling superior about ourselves.
Anyone interested in having good faith conversations should actively avoid labeling anyone or any action as a racist or sexist. The genuine racists and sexists are usually more than happy to self-identify as such. Everyone else, and I mean everyone else, is just a mixed bag of good and bad prejudices that can, with work, be improved over time.
I'd argue that people now are still treating it as a binary situation and not including the nuance that is requisite of a spectrum in determining their response. As an exaggerated example we can't treat a grand wizard who burns crosses on lawns the same as someone who touches someone else's hair. If we react the same then the reaction is not acknowledging the continuum but rather lowering the threshold for the binary classification.
> When we talk about people's prejudices it causes us to examine potential solutions in a productive way. When we accuse someone of being racist or sexist, we imply that they're beyond redemption, and we can skip right to hating them and feeling superior about ourselves.
I think we actually have a lot of agreement. Reading your response I think a lot of our disagreement comes down to diction, not philosophy. When you say
> Everyone else, and I mean everyone else, is just a mixed bag of good and bad prejudices that can, with work, be improved over time
I fully agree, I just use different words because that's the words used around me. Words only mean what society uses them to mean. This is a big part of why I mentioned intention being an important component. I don't view someone that is racist/sexist as being nonredeemable, this includes Neo Nazis and Grand Dragons of the KKK (I know this is an unpopular belief, but it is one I hold). This is part of why I said that we need safe spaces to fail. I do think how we react needs to be tempered and thought out because my goal is to fix behavior, not punish. But if you lump me together with those that seek punishment (I believe this is a minority, but highly sensationalized minority) we're going to have a hard time discussing. Because I don't have major qualms with what you've said and I don't understand how you read my comment as such.
At anything that the most hostile interpretation possible could somehow construe as racism/sexism.
And basically, anything can be construed as racism/sexism given some of the current definitions.
Sitting peacefully on your couch minding your own business is racism, according to Kendi/diAngelo.
Treating women equally and not achieving perfect equality of outcome is sexism. Treating men and women differently in order the achieve equality of outcome: also sexism.
Leaving women to make their own choices, which may not exactly match men's, is sexism.
Giving women candid feedback is so sexism. Not giving women candid feedback: also sexism.
Yeah, and that is weird, isn't it?
Because most people nowadays would not consider it a sexist action for a woman to cross the street because there is a man walking.
In fact, these days it seems to be demanded of men to notice the situation and cross the street if they are walking near a woman, so to self-discriminate. And the man would be considered sexist/misogynist if they didn't self-discriminate this way.
It's all so wonderfully self-contradictory.
I'm sorry if it was interpreted this way (I know some people want this, but this is not what I'm advocating for).
> Isn't the entire point that we want less of it?
This is goal. But we also can't solve a problem if we don't acknowledge it. To do that expanding the definition helps. BUT if you expand the definition you need to also respond differently (this is where I disagree with what we see). We need to see nuance that there's a big difference between rape and not being as open with advice due to potentially becoming a social pariah. Our responses to these should be extremely different (which is what I'm advocating for). But this also means we need to recognize our progress (which I've been accused of for dog whistling having said that).
I just think we need to stop making our fights over diction and about philosophy. If we're placing diction over philosophy we'll never solve anything and always be fighting. We can never have unanimous agreement on diction, that's just not how language works (words evolve). So the question is if your disagreements with me mainly over word choice or if we have disagreements in philosophy (and are they minor or major?)
What's different is the moral color of the sexism. If Eric treats women differently in his workplace because he thinks they should be raising babies, not writing code, our cultural norms say Eric is a Bad Person.
Now suppose Bob genuinely believes women and men should have equal opportunities and career paths in the workplace. But Bob treats women differently in his workplace because he's afraid of a false accusation that ends up with him getting sued, fired, having his reputation ruined, etc.
Then we'd say that Bob isn't a bad person. Or at the very least, he's not anywhere near as bad as Eric. He's just trying to do his best to protect himself from a social system he doesn't control, that will grind him up if he gets caught in its gears.
If you take the definition of "sexism" to be "treating people differently based on their gender," the case against Bob is airtight. Bob's literally a sexist: He treats women differently because of gender.
I think the reason you're trying to argue Bob's not a sexist is because the word "sexist" itself is normative. Sexists are Bad People like Eric. Bob's not a Bad Person, so we shouldn't use the word "sexist" to describe him, because "sexist" has a moral color -- part of the meaning of the label is that you're a Bad Person.
In other words, if you say Bob's not a sexist, you must be taking your definition of "sexist" to be something else. Treating women differently for a certain kind of reason.
With this more nuanced definition of "sexist," it's possible that Eric's a sexist and Bob is not, even if their actual actions toward women are the same.
To properly describe what Bob is, you might need to create a new word to describe someone who treats women differently, but in a morally neutral way (or at least a lighter shade of grey).
Racism might also benefit from having a term that fills this linguistic / conceptual niche. ("Systemic racism" might have fit the bill at one time, but I think that particular term has become colored -- pun intended -- by a moral connotation.)
1) This was a precedent for public shaming without evidence or due process 2) This generally changed the working dynamic between male and female to something extremely formal and sometimes borderline hostile 3) It was a bandwagon for actresses(and eventually other careers) to make money because of 1)
I do lean towards the opposite opinion. But I'm in no position to judge definitively whether the net effect has been positive or negative so far, I'd need to interview a sizeable and representative sample of women for that.
Responding to your points:
1) What's missing from this argument is how we get to this point. IMO, the reason public shaming was used by the movement as a way to achieve justice, is because from their point of view, there was no other way to achieve justice. It's a classic example of "taking matters into their own hands" because the system failed them. Public shaming isn't the end goal, it should be a wake-up call to restore faith in the system.
2) I don't feel like anything meaningful changed in how I interact with female coworkers since metoo. But I only have my own experience to go on, so I won't make any big claims here.
3) Even if this is true (citation needed), it seems irrelevant.
1) Do you have faith in the newfound public judgement system which by the way uses privately owned platforms for its media? Would you prefer it over the judicial system which has been developing over the past few centuries with all its flaws? Even with its flaws, the alternative for me is a hundred times worse.
3) Some women decided to pursue public figures and since they knew the damage that could be done to their target's image it was settled before court. I don't keep a record of such news and they are usually quickly buried as part of the deal.
Do you agree that there is a substantial difference between stating "I think/believe X is true" and stating "X is true"?
In my view, you can only honestly use the second form if you can back it up at least somewhat. You don't need 100% certainty, but definitely more than anecdotes.
My first comment in this thread was a criticism of someone using the latter form without backing it up. In a trivial sense it is indeed a conclusion, but not one about the outcome of the #metoo movement, but one about the parent comment: that it asserts a claim with unwarranted confidence.
1) No, I do not have faith in a public shaming based justice system. I also did not argue that this should be the new normal. But our established justice system has evidently been systematically failing women, and it needed a wake-up call to take their grievances seriously. A justice system should never see its own legitimacy as a given: it is kept honest by the knowledge that if people stop seeing it as legitimate, they will seek justice in other avenues.
3) Again, I don't see how this is relevant to the question we are discussing, which is "has #metoo been a net positive for women?" It seems to be an argument for the statement "it has been bad for some men who did not deserve it", but that's a broader question.
The topic of discussion was whether #metoo was a net positive or a net negative for women. Simply saying that it has created an environment of fear does not address this question at all. Even if true, perhaps having some people be afraid is a net positive for women in the workplace? Or perhaps it is negative, but other positive outcomes of the movement outweigh it?
And as this article points out, the zeitgeist of the moment is the presumption of guilt, so any accusation of being an *ist comes with tremendous consequences, and people are understandably fearful of that.
What you're observing that this creates an unfortunate vicious cycle: the fear of persecution for an accidental offense leads to disengagement which disadvantages the very people who the disengagement is meant "not to hurt."
This isn't a new observation.
MLK said: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction ... The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." [1]
I think this is where the extremes of "wokeism" and "social justice" miss the mark. When the mob is rallied to punish and seek vengeance against those who have done wrong, it can become a witch hunt.
To Dr. King the path to victory over oppression was through forgiveness[2].
"Here then is the Christian weapon against social evil. We are to go out with the spirt of forgiveness, heal the hurts, right the wrongs and change society with forgiveness. Of course we don't think this is practical. This is the solution of the race problem."
In the hypermedia era I honestly don't know if calm, civil discourse is possible. It certainly isn't profitable compared to the level of engagement driven by outrage.
But I think if we wanted to take the next major step forward it would be wise to look back at how much progress happened during the Civil Rights era, and specifically to understand how and why the progress was made. Can we imagine applying Dr. King's words today, to seek to understand each other, to identify wrongs done intentionally or unintentionally, and then to forgive each other for past mistakes so we can do better going forward?
[1]: https://mlk.wsu.edu/about-dr-king/famous-quotes/ [2]: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/mea...
So, considering you are the potential carrier of a nuclear power it makes sense to thread carefully.
The problem isn't sexism. The problem is that being wrongly labeled as a sexist is a socio-economical death blow while the accusers gets scot free. This imbalance in power has to be settled somehow and I think this is a pretty good solution.
Posting this anonymously since I'm not insane.
I have the deepest sympathy for any hardship you have experienced. From the conversations I've had with my sister and colleagues, it's obvious sexism and its effects are real.
That said, your post frames it as if your career is not in your own hands. Please afford yourself some more agency. I have overcome a narcissist parent, academic failure, classism and depression, working my way up to programming and a college degree on my own dime. I find it's fundamentally unproductive to see yourself as a car vendor mascot, being dragged whichever the wind blows. Engage with the people holding you back to get what you need and change your environment if there's no other way.
I found "Nice girls [still] don't get the corner office" (the second edition added the "still") by Lois P. Frankel educational. The book's about her practice as a career coach for women and lists the mistakes her clients make to subconsciously sabotage their own careers. Of the 101 errors in the first print, I recognised a good 30% in myself. All this to say: it's not because there's sexism and perceived sexism that there's nothing else going on.
Part of this is that I think that men feel they are walking on egg shells. The kinds of male assertiveness that my wife found attractive when she met me also can leave women who aren't into this assertiveness feeling harassed.
I feel that we need to be clear more about what is "desirable" masculinity it "desirable assertiveness" vs its toxic counterparts. Failure to do this will essentially neuter men over the long term - and it will lead to "men clamming up" or worse, a significant surge in the number of men who "go their own way" be it in the job or at home in their personal life.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/aug/29/men-wom...
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/men-are-afraid-to-mentor-f...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellevate/2019/01/09/dear-sir-do...
https://kelainetaylor.medium.com/to-the-men-whose-response-t...
I'm not super worried that we'll be crushed under a matriarchy. Heck, in some regards a matriarchy might be a bit gentler than a patriarchy :-)
Edit: I seem to have touched a nerve, a lot of weak/sensitive men around here, it seems.
Men and women will get along as they always have, with ups and downs. There are no "identity groups" because we aren't and can't be enemies. There are just a few loonies on both sides making a ton of noise, and they're getting amplified by the internet. They'll either get boring at some point or just be ignored completely from the outside of their circles.
Sadly if you're concerned with these overreaction, and voice those concerns, you will be labelled as being against the chance. You quickly learn to shut up and just wait it out.
This is a smart move for any kind of group/mob move/reaction, by the way. In much more extreme cases you'd be the smart, polite, but dead guy in the crowd, otherwise.
Crowds as a whole are rash and emotional, you can't reason with them. There's a reason Animal Farm had 10 word slogans, at most ;-)
Yes, many time the distinction in the margins between toxic and desirable masculinity is partially based on the attractiveness of the person in question.
For what it's worth - men and women are equally bad in regards to lookism. I think we need to simply start explicitly saying that we shouldn't discriminate because someone is ugly. If RMS were as attractive as Micheal foucault, he wouldn't get in trouble for those age of consent beliefs (foucault, an attractive leftist, famously defended lowering the age of consent)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_...
No one wants to cancel foucault because him and other french post modernists are the intellectual foundation for today's "wokeism"
A lot of the double standard is due to RMS being fat and ugly. No other explanation.
It takes a stance based on the parent comment and gives an example where they believe looks had considerable differences in the behavior of society towards somebody. The example is not perhaps the best, but the fact that society actually shows favouritism towards attractive people should not be controversial.
https://www.ruetir.com/2021/03/29/writer-says-philosopher-mi...
Were already there. And it's not gonna get better.
I think there is a lot of pain brewing, and whether or not people come out the other side of it more entrenched in their worldview, or with more humility after having learned from the wild ride we are currently on.
Heck maybe I’ll come out the other side finally believing that there is only one true way to look at people and relationships and power differences, and any deviation from that is violence.
I mean, why not, right? If gays can allegedly have "internalised homophobia", then why can't women have "internalised misogyny".
And so it goes. When we jettison reason, everyone gets to say what they want, and no-one gets to say that one conclusion is more soundly-based that another.
Sounds like it is, in fact, a thing.
And guess what all this talk about "toxic masculinity" and generally vilifying all men leads to? If you said "chilling effect" then you are bang on. It is a bloody minefield. Keep your head down, never talk about non-work stuff, refuse to provide feedback or do interviews, refuse to help people out unless it is directly your job' responsibility to do so etc and hope you don't get fired.
It genuinely feels like I have a target on my back.
I'm 100% tired of all of it, to the point that I almost want someone to cancel me.
edit Please explain downvotes? Suggesting a person saying "I want someone to cancel me" seek help is downvote worthy now?
On the bright side, this is hopefully a healthy opportunity for us all to find some friends outside of work.
The cancel culture crowd today seem to think yes. They look to him as an idol and see his only flaw as his unjust cause.
I don’t think I agree. Extrajudiciality should be shunned in all its forms even if it leads to bad people meeting bad ends.
Seriously, we are now asked to treat everyone with respect and that is a problem?
Edit: No I don't mean eye for eye. I am merely pointing out, this is a male dominant industry where women didn't even have a chance for a long time. The moment we face little uneasiness, we are complaining and throwing temper tantrums.
So, no, it isn't a problem to respect everyone.
Either parent and 'other side' have been both victimised (by him now knowing how they felt) or parent isn't a victim but since you claim he is experiancing what 'the other side' did neither were they.
Maybe try listening for a change.
Please omit personal swipes from your HN posts, no matter how wrong another comment is or you feel it is.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You cannot simplify the problems of "woke culture" as "asking everyone to treat others with respect", because that is not what is happening on the dark side of "woke" and you can't pretend that the dark side doesn't exist.
This is not to say that sexism or racism isn’t or hasn’t been a large problem, but the correction pendulum has really swung way too far for some people and that is actually not at all helpful since it only builds up resentment among people who actually are supporters of the cause of equality.
A lot of people might not just be that good at what they do but manage to advance by way of their gender/race and scare away any negative feedback. Thus, given that their skills themselves won't save them, leveraging mob justice to do so is a viable strategy for them.
I wish you weren’t getting downvoted because I think your comment reveals so much.
The "progressive" cause is just as capable of doing wrong as the "conservative" cause; there is this general perception that being "woke" is the moral high ground and if you're against the "conservative" people who are jerks then you and your peers do no wrong.
In fact it seems like the conservative jerks and the "woke" jerks are doing the exact same thing - abusing groups of peoples and behaviors in order to show off their moral superiority.
A bunch of young people in the past generations left the church because they saw church people hating on folks who didn't fit their definition of "good people" and saw that definition distorted into abusing folks that deserved to be who they were. The exact same behaviors are showing up and getting stronger in the "woke" community, just with different targets. I'm still waiting for the popular backlash against the "woke" agenda - probably just the next generation of kids rebelling against their parents' ideals.
I have a target on my back too and occasionally am treated like a predator, but I also have the privilege that though it isn't harmless to me, I usually have the ability to get up and exit the situation treating me poorly. This is what everybody should try to cultivate - the freedom to quit a bad situation and not be a slave to a particular job, group of people, life plan, etc. When you can say "I would like to do this but I have other options" then it becomes a whole lot harder to be abused because when bad things happen you can just say goodbye.
I'm only half joking...
This is a great example. The Elect tolerate nothing less than full throated support of the cause/outrage du jour, and anyone taking a moderate position is branded a problem, just as you've done here.
Isn't this a core of the whole "woke" thing? Just because you have a nice experience doesn't mean everybody does and you shouldn't silence somebody not having a good time because you don't understand or have the same experience.
With respect, and I'm not saying this is you, but often I've heard that type of line - and then when you get into the detail, the firing was an obvious correct decision.
Edit: lol @ the downvotes, you can k!ss my @ss. Glad to have you here as I guess you were rejected from Parler.
Obviously it’s usually justified because there are legal consequences otherwise.
The problem is all the other things that can happen that aren’t firing.
Without the facts of the matter, you're talking out of your h'arse.
Either firings are legal or not. They have nothing to do with office culture.
Insane and skewed? ... yes, yes you are. Well done for identifying it, it's just your aim is about 180 degrees wrong. I imagine you have that issue frequently in life.
Have a nice day :) (you absolute, unmitigated pr!ck, lol)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Some people deserve the full force of the boot.
But I'll respect your opinion on my behaviour.
Best,
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: you've unfortunately been posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments repeatedly elsewhere as well. Can you please not? We're trying for something different here.
Some of us have felt like that for thirty years.
Once apon a time there were a group of people who swaggered through life saying whatever popped into their brains whom ever it offended or belittled. They engaged in metaphorical, but brutal, wrestling matches not just with each other but with any body who crossed their paths.
Now life is very hard for them.
Should have happened thirty years ago. Has it gone too far? Probably. <sound of a very small violin>
I hazard to say this post is a good example of the problem.
The Jews were demonized by Christians in the ye-old days based on imaginary qualities that simply weren't true.
So were the Land-lords.
So were the "witches" and the "heretics".
Not them, but people physically similar to them. An important distinction. The people you're actually describing are generally retired or dead.
Are you attributing certain characteristics to people only because they are part of that group ?
Should people that are born into that group without a choice be punished for what other members did or are accused of having done in the past ?
Mostly white. But not only.
Reflecting decades later I think they were probably mostly insecure, and at the time I realised they were mostly only marginally competent.
"Only a fucking idiot would do that" meaning "I do not know what you are talking about but if I admit it I might look bad, so I will attack you instead"
Some times they were truly brilliant. I could call out some very famous project leaders (one of whom attacked me on a mailing list on a topic over which I was an expert and he was not. Deeply personal attacks) but I do not think it would be helpful. There are plenty of examples, and they are easy to find in old logs.
But times are changing and being a total prick to prove a point is not tolerated in the worlds I (mostly) move in now. It takes debate and reasoning to prove your point.
Should have happened thirty years ago. We lost a generation to fields where asbestos suits were not mandatory to participate. That was literally the advice for almost every forum back in the day "wear your asbestos suit"
Please don’t express your experiences or opinions on things. If you were one of these _____ , we would love to hear your life experiences or opinions on things. Because you were not born one of these ____, we don’t.
Regards, Your Morally Superior GroupThink Social Overlords
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Wouldn't someone talking to someone "lower" on the "oppression hierarchy" just be what we basically have today? That sounds like "privilege," or an "imbalanced power dynamic." I think you'll only be able to talk to equals, whatever that is, and by whatever metric is en vogue for that day.
You’d generally only talk candidly to those who were not just peers, but you already had a deep seated existing rapport with and trust. Friends?
Everyone else gets the politically safe story that is supposed to be told. I’ve seen it in action, and it makes me sad because it becomes fundamentally corrosive.
And if you think for some people that doesn’t include the right kind of outrage discussion or telling the right stories to the visible oppressed minority they’re mentoring so they can get the right checkbox when they hopefully get considered for SVP (or as plan B, their mentee does) - I’ve also got a bridge to sell you.
In that circumstance, I think it is clear that my sexual orientation is the basis by which they are judging the authoritativeness I have to speak on the topic. Never mind the formal qualifications, or the logic or veracity of what I am actually saying. Like, I know we all have little unconscious checklists like that for judging whether someone is credible, but it is uncomfortable to see the effect live.
It also dates me, but I had a blood transfusion in 1982. At that time, it was a Russian Roulette if I ended up with HIV blood or not. I didn't. Had I been innfected, I would have ended up like Ryan White.
I don't think it's unlikely. It was early in the chain of events, so even if it was six months it could have had a big impact.
This is not a dig at you, btw, it seems clear that you’re making the best of the situation.
Wide eyes. Disbelief. That can't possibly be right. With all the people I have watched become HIV+ over the years, it is of course very believable to me. But the data from PHAC is reliable enough, and it speaks for itself. I shouldn't need to make it believable. But of course people are not emotionless abstract rational machines, and that's why I'm doing these sort of talks rather than emailing out memos with charts.
(The good news at least is those numbers are almost certainly coming down with new medical interventions like PrEP, earlier treatment and routine testing, which are my main points these days. I might actually get to be happy with the numbers in the national HIV tracking data when it's compiled for 2021.)
Someone wants to disagree with whatever nonsense the hivemind is raving about in the moment, but in order to do so they have to prostrate themselves and make it clear whose side they're on before they make their (often very valid) point.
e.g. "I hate Trump just has much as the rest of you but..." or "Look we need to be super supportive of X group and my dad is actually X but..."
I've noticed this trend where people started to accuse each other of psychological trickery a lot. I think it descends as a "defense" from that. I was never really sure of how many psychological games were really being played and how much people just reached for the terms to use as dismissal from criticism.
So if I preface an opinion with 'X, but', it may not be all about begging for the right to dissent; I may have good reason to think that, without the preface, what I say will signal some beliefs or values that I don't hold. If those things are genuinely hurtful to a vulnerable group, or simply reprehensible to me, then I have good reason to disavow them, regardless of whether I need to do so in order to be heard.
If I'm hyper-paranoid about my statement signaling beliefs I don't hold, isn't that just an indication that people are trying to assume too much based on that "signaling"?
Sort of, and it's definitely part of the same dynamic. The differences, or at least the points I wanted to emphasise, are:
- I thought you were focusing on people's need to signal their in-group membership and general conformity (sometimes sincerely, sometimes not) so that they might be listened to and not shunned. I was pointing out that the motivation for the caveats can have a less cynical/craven strand: the simple desire to clearly communicate one's true values and beliefs.
- We might be collectively reinforcing this state of affairs without individually doing anything irrational. You say 'people are trying to assume too much based on that "signaling"' -- but given the equilibrium we're currently in, if someone expresses unpopular opinion X on hot-button topic Y in context Z without any caveats, I may be quite right to suspect that their real views are even more extreme, and/or that they come as part of a broader ideological package. If that's not the case, and the person wants to express their actual unpopular opinions without appearing to hint at the other ones, they may be right to add the tortuous preface. If they do so, the strength of the implicit signal sent by those who don't add the caveats increases, and the cycle continues; none of us can unilaterally break it without (on the receiving end) wilfully ignoring implicit meaning, or (on the sending end) risking being completely misunderstood.
edit: also, I don't know if you were implying this is a notably modern/progressive thing, but I think the basic dynamic is pretty universal. Definitely right now in the circles I live in, I'd mostly be afraid of signalling right-wing stuff. And the whole thing does seem to have increased in intensity over the last decade or so. But I see people in the various right-wing tribes being just as conformist, and I don't think it's really anything new. I'm confident that people arguing for less conservative interpretations of the Bible 20/50/100/1000 years ago were very careful to signal that they were genuine pious Christians.
(I don't like this dynamic, by the way. I'm a bit of a literalist, I like to make clean logical distinctions and evaluate each idea on its own merits, and I'm not very comfortable with the world of social signalling and game-playing we all seem to be trapped in. But it's completely pervasive (not only in political contexts) and I don't think people are wrong to read and react to the signals, even though they sometimes do it badly.)
It shouldn't matter if you are pro-Trump if a bunch of people are being anti-Trump in a wildly over-the-top way and you want to point that out. Or vice versa – if you're surrounded by Trump loyalists and want to point out that something he did you disagree with, you shouldn't have to say "I love Trump but...", you should just be able to say "This is dumb, he shouldn't have done this".
The problem is that we've polarized everything to the point where this isn't very feasible.
I half agree, but for me it depends on the situation. If the point is purely logical or empirical, and a fully detailed argument is made or watertight evidence presented, then the speaker's other beliefs and values are irrelevant. But often things are a bit fuzzier, and it makes sense to take the speaker's identity and character into account when making a snap judgment on how seriously to take them. And there are social reasons to care as well; conversation usually isn't just about truth-seeking. Even if people would take my arguments equally seriously regardless, I would prefer not to imply alignment with a set of values I don't actually hold.
In all honesty I think this mindset is precisely why we've ended up in this massively polarized situation. When you "take the speaker's identity and character into account", you're obviously ("you" here being people in general not you in particular) to lend more credence to someone who's priors match your own. In other words, you give the benefit of the doubt to people like you, and interpret more uncharitably the words of someone who you think isn't like you. This creates a destructive cycle where everything eventually devolves into an echo chamber, increasing polarization and creating more echo chambers.
That's why I like how one of the principles behind Hacker News is to employ the "principle of charity" – try to interpret people's words in the best possible light, regardless of their priors or your own.
If you don't have the bandwidth to process all the arguments you're receiving... receive fewer arguments. Get involved in fewer shitposting threads on the internet. Have fewer arguments about politics at work. The solution is not to assume / reduce / summarize until the arguments become tidy little things you can stick in boxes, it is to just reduce your workload so that you can give the arguments you care most about the attention they deserve.
Likewise, you talk about devoting your attention to the most important arguments -- but how do you decide which arguments deserve that attention? You can't be doing that 100% independently, you must at some point be allowing other people to raise issues to your attention, and to shift your priors a bit by virtue of the credibility they have earned via their track record (of being right, of being honest, of caring about things you care about).
The Messenger Is the Message: Science Talk podcast, June 2020.
This supposed hierarchy of oppression, based on identity characteristics such as race, gender and sexuality, really is the biggest scam going.
Almost all of the oppression we see around us can be explained by wealth disparities, corruption, and abuse of power. Yet, identarians insist on shoehorning everything into their flawed worldview.
The Black Lives Matter movement was a telling example of this - police brutality is indeed an ongoing problem in society, but it doesn't just apply to black people. It's anyone the police feel they can get away with abusing. Just look at how they treat homeless people, drug addicts, and so on, regardless of race.
Another is celebrating people as tokens regardless of their actions. First mixed-race female Vice President of the USA - okay, but what sort of shitty role model is this? Rather reminds me of: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Co90umqUsAAdgQI?format=jpg
We would all do well to be critical of how identity politics is being used to mask the real root causes of oppression in our society. The so-called left wing of politics is the worst for this too, and I say this as a life-long leftist. Why make everything about identity; where has the traditional focus on class gone?
Yes, and almost none of the people founding startups in Silicon Valley are oppressed by any reasonable understanding that concept.
I’ve never understood why they are so desperate to be oppressed that they have to invent new categories to be part of then claim to be oppressed when literally no one even knows what they are.
I recently talked to a mom who visited her adult foster daughter with a different skin tone. Her daughter reminded her to make sure she doesn't forget her ID in the hotel.
The mom was confused. They were just going to take a walk in Munich. Why would she need an ID? She never has an ID on her when she goes for a walk.
The daughter said, because the police, they stop you and ask to see your ID!
Mom couldn't believe it that the police was so different in Munich. Then it dawned on her. Foster daughter had brown skin, so she was randomly stopped by police and asked for ID because she looks like an immigrant.
Mom was white and has never ever been stopped by police before.
The police absolutely treat people different because of race.
I've also seen a free Leonard Peltier protest march in Copenhagen, but I'm not sure that the state of Native American rights in Denmark and the U.S is somehow comparable.
This point is universal and it doesn't matter on which side of the Atlantic it happened.
This conclusion isn't quite there.
In China, foreigners are notionally required to carry their passport with them. I have never actually obeyed that, because it is a very bad idea. And it's never mattered, because although I'm obligated to produce it on demand, that demand has never been made.
It's not because I blend in. Any idiot can see that I'm not Chinese. "Looking like an immigrant" is not sufficient to be stopped by the police.
And a core premise of the Black Lives Matter movement is that Black people are generally an easier target that the police can get away with abusing, and police know this. Police can also typically identify Black people easily on sight, putting them at greater risk. Class is a valuable lens through which to view systems of oppression, but we shouldn't neglect these other dimensions of race, gender, etc... that are clearly a part of our society.
And if you actually stuck around in leftist circles you would see how the "indentarians" as you so called them are in opposition to those, too.
> First mixed-race female Vice President of the USA - okay, but what sort of shitty role model is this?
Everyone I know in identity politics circles was critical of her too! Indeed!
I think you've essentially misunderstood why there was a push against solely class-based analysis, and why identity-specific systemic oppression was introduced to this concept -- the two are not in opposition. The reason it was brought in was because measures to deconstruct and eliminate class-based oppression, often kept systemic inequality between identity.
For example, the push to eliminate sexism has for the most part only advantaged white women (You'll have to trust me on the proof for this since I'm writing this while on the go -- however look up books like Carceral Capitalism and "Why I Don't Talk To White People About Race" for examples). The introduction of how your identity impacts how class boundaries affect you was necessary to better understand the dynamics and better shed and cast off systems of oppression
> Everyone I know in identity politics circles was critical of her too! Indeed!
I'm quite skeptical of this claim. For the most part the people pushing race and gender identity narratives in the US had at best mild criticism of Ms. Harris, and were mainly focused on her multi-racial identity and its historical significance. Almost as if her terrible politics simply didn't matter because of her identity.
The same view shared by myself and my fellow 'intersectional-ists'. I haven't heard of anyone aside from 'centrists' and fascists that adopt a different viewpoint? Perhaps there is a subset of fools on breadtube or facebook, sure, but they are vastly outnumbered.
> Almost as if her terrible politics simply didn't matter because of her identity.
Well then your lenses are vastly, vastly different to mine, and do not match up with both those in modern academic circles (Like, literally just read any new literature covering intersectionality and the introduction of it to communism), those on the ground in protests, and those present in progressive/queer groups (like me). It's worth noting that at the moment there is a huge divide between "progressive" communists, and, well, "regressive" communists (For want of better terms). From what I observed from stalking facebook commie groups, most of the latter are still stuck with 100 year old debates -- and while they have a huge amount of theoretical knowledge, they have no practical contributions to any revolutionary movements thusfar. For example, most of the discussion I observed was focused on rehabilitating Stalin's image, whereas most of the 'on the ground' antifacist-aligned folks are of the mind that that isn't really something modern communism should waste it's time on.
I would suggest at least reading some modern intersectional writing, if only to better understand the thing you're arguing against. The basic focus of intersectionality and how the systemic abuse created by late-stage capitalism impacts specific groups differently (The 'intersection' of those groups and the oppression they face), and how movements (even revolutionary) to improve conditions have backfired have been around for at least 60 years if Tony Cliff's 1978 writing "Why Socialists Should Support Gays" (https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1978/08/gays.ht...) is anything to go by -- at least if you will give me the small leeway of temporarily ignoring how controversial Tony Cliff is as a figure in Communism.
If you are in search of one of the progressive communities I talk of, Something Awful has recently (last 5ish years) turned into a very leftist-heavy place, with frequent debate about neoliberalism, capitalism, etc. You will be able to ask questions there and receive answers and engage in productive discussion.
'Disease and Disaster' (Debate and Discussion): https://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=4...
And 'C-SPAM' (The politics subforum): https://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=2...
Are both good places to talk about this with progressive, mostly-intersectional communists. Just take note a lot of the thread titles are in jest, you should navigate to the last five pages and pick up context as you go (A lot of the threads have been running since 2016!) and espousing neoliberalism in an annoying way is a swift path to a probation :)
Suffice it to say that I don't think you're on as solid intellectual footing as you think you are.
I have stairs in my house, too, by the way. SA has always had a pseudo-leftist bent, even when we were passing around videos of 9/11 set to the tune of Benny Hill. I have a few photoshop friday entries, in fact, if that's still a thing. D&D is the self-absorbed, ego-driven SA analog of stoners marveling over their own hands at 1am at the local Denny's. No thanks.
There is a very real problem with “oppression olympics” centered on racial identity, in this country.
> The impoverished of any race are more susceptible to police violence, and impoverished Black people even more so
is true. But the statement
> Black people of all economic classes are more susceptible to police violence
is also true. There is no logical contradiction between the two. Therefore, when someone responds to the second statement with the first, their response carries the connotation that the first statement is somehow "more true". It implicitly minimizes the struggle of Black people.
Not everyone who makes the first statement in response to the second intends minimize the struggle of Black people, but I think in the majority of cases that is exactly what they intend to do.
There is no contradiction between the two, but only one of them is considered socially acceptable in certain circles, these days, in any context. That's problematic.
Doing things to solve the real issues would run into difficult real-world problems both symbolic and logistical/physical. Overcoming them require having conversations where people
1. Do creative problem-solving
2. Say “well, actually...” about practical implementation details.
3. Speak honestly about the real difficulties and risks of unintended consequences.
4. Admit to failure and error and even inattention.
All of which is blocked by similar social dynamics to the ones discussed in the article.
that's the point of identity politics, to take away that focus by distracting and dividing the working class
https://i.imgur.com/wusW5Rn.jpg
You're not wrong about that. But many people face further oppression based on their race, gender, and sexuality, in addition to wealth and class.
I also think the amount of overshoot is proportional to the amount of sexism that was present in a society thirty years ago. I believe Northern Europe has been trending slowly towards gender equality since the 90s, and thus the amount of overshoot here is much less from the recent rapid changes like #meetoo.
Also our kids roam around the neighbourhood freely. We're thinking of giving our 9-year-old a cellphone soon, for now she just has an analog watch and we agree on what time she has to be home by.
If you look at statistics, the rate of women murdered per capita, and the rate of women who experience sexualized violence per capita, are around 5x higher in the US than in Northern Europe. The murder rate here for children (excluding by their own parents) is below 1 per million children per year.
We're definitely not perfect, we have a long way to go still, but we are starting from a more equal place if you look at the status pre-2017.
What is the mechanism for this? The majority of the "woke" twitter mob is 30 or younger.
"Underdamped system" is very apt here. There are some positive feedback factors which exacerbate the situation in the "underdamped system." If you give over power to a mob, then the very principles which act as damping can be completely abandoned. Things like "innocent until proven guilty," and the valuing of evidence.
The answer to unchecked, abused, one-sided power is not more unchecked, one-sided power with the vector rotated 180 degrees. That's just welcoming more dysfunction and abuse.
we are starting from a more equal place if you look at the status pre-2017
We are starting from a place where typical middle-school, high school, and college kids are likely to answer with expletives towards the principles mentioned above -- depending on the context in which you ask their opinion.
EDIT: Way back when, when I was watching that Vice report about the Evergreen State College activists, and one of them said, "...then f#ck your Free Speech!" I became very afraid that our society was in for a world of hurt. I'm pretty sure Gandhi and MLK were for Free Speech and the other principles mentioned above.
No I don't think it's this. I think it's the advent of the internet. The internet changed everything. What you will find is that the internet is responsible for making everything look like an "overshoot."
At that time the abolishing of Racial Segregation was already old news and happened at least 5-6 decades before the internet. If this was an overshoot you would think the overshoot would've happened after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and not on some random time period 60 years later when the internet just happens to be 2 decades old.
this is the way
>Hegelian dialectic, usually presented in a threefold manner, was stated by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus[27] as comprising three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, giving rise to its reaction; an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis; and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic
women murdered per capita has indeed gone down, but so have the general murder rate. Men are still murdered far more often than women, and reached the highest ratio ever measured in the last summery by the government agency BRÅ, with around 77% to 23%. I would be careful to attribute such numbers to gender equality, especially since the trend seems to continue upwards.
The statistics for assault and sexual assault has similar complexity. The combined risk of being assaulted or sexual assaulted has been historically similar for both women and men, with assault being more common for men and sexual assault for women. Between 2012 and 2018 there were a major increase in sexual assault, and especially rape after 2015. The reason for this can't really be discussed since it involve an other political hot topic.
It still might be a rapid change that is causing people to overshoot, but it is likely a much harder token to measure. Changes in political power.
That statement does not seem to be accurate: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/nordic-count...
They have had decades, minimum, of this just being how things are. And things have not found a way to change to a more easy going society. If anything things have just hardened up as information and media have become more prevalent. In comparison, powerful people fearing being potentially (mis)interpreted not being worth the risk to their entire career is a relatively new phenomenon. I wager that the OP of this article doesn't have a solution to the problem of trust by investors, because women have yet to discover the solution to their own generalized mistrust of men outside their direct social circle despite how long that situation has gone on for.
Until the risk / reward dynamic changes (and I do not see how it could without making people less accountable), I fully anticipate that this self censorship in society will not only just continue, but will yet increase further in an information society where powerful people can be made accountable by the public as stories of people being held to account to their actions, regardless of whether those actions were deliberate, accidental or misunderstandings.
Before you get outraged I just want to caveat this by saying that what I'm about to say is just controversial and anecdotal. If you share a different opinion than fine, this is just my opinion.
The general fear women have of men that permeates all of their behavior is more of a biologically programmed fear than it is a an environmentally programmed one. What makes me say this? Because, anecdotally, women have this fear even when there is ZERO prior trauma. Although they can train this fear away, practically all women are naturally more guarded when among unfamiliar men, even with No prior Trauma.
I've been been in tons of fists fights when I was a kid. There are many times where I've lost and was beaten until my face was a bloody mess by other dudes. This is 100x more trauma than an average woman will ever go through and even I don't live in fear of "men."
Now this is not scientific evidence but anecdotal evidence is not invalid. It's the only way to talk about such subjects short of doing a 10 year scientific study. So you may have a different experience and I respect that but I also respectfully ask anyone who replies not to start a gender flame war and get outraged at my viewpoint.
>They have had decades, minimum, of this just being how things are. And things have not found a way to change to a more easy going society. If anything things have just hardened up as information and media have become more prevalent. In comparison, powerful people fearing being potentially (mis)interpreted not being worth the risk to their entire career is a relatively new phenomenon. I wager that the OP of this article doesn't have a solution to the problem of trust by investors, because women have yet to discover the solution to their own generalized mistrust of men outside their direct social circle despite how long that situation has gone on for.
You used the word "decades," and this is what the wrong part of your statement. It is actually factually wrong and there is tons of anthropological research to back this up. The word you should have used was "centuries." Practically all of human civilization has been patriarchal. They have never identified in the history of archaeology and anthropology any human civilization where the dominant sex was not Men. This fact flies across time and across geographic boundaries of countless cultures. There is not a single exception. There are civilizations where women took on roles that are traditionally "male" but there has never been a civilization that has been consistently matriarchal. Thus from this perspective it is arguable that patriarchy could be biologically ingrained and that modern civilization is currently trending beyond out biological imperative.
The additional rights afforded by women today is largely a modern and very unique phenomenon. According to the current school of thought in academia much of it is attributed to changes in technology. Sewage, tampons, etc.
I do not subscribe to the belief that patriarchy is biological because there is numerous empirical examples of historical matriarchal societies in places such as South America, Asia, Native American Hopi tribe, Celtic society, Germany and Estonia including in the recorded history of my own non-American society.
Yes but it's like saying humans live for at least one minute which is true but misleading because humans live for about 80 years. Huge timescale issue that exists despite your caveat.
Your second opinion which I respect is not one shared by experts who study gender roles in anthropology. They cite that the reason why women have more power in modern society is not one made by choice but one made by technology. Women today have greater freedom in our societies because they are no longer held back biological weaknesses such as menstruation as modern technology helps assist them in this endeavor. Additionally, modern society is no longer centered around manual labor so women can gain power without resorting to physical strength.
Keep in mind, this is not MY opinion. This is the opinion of the scientific world that exists outside of both the gender cancel culture agenda or the male dominated mens rights activists.
>I do not subscribe to the belief that patriarchy is biological because there is numerous empirical examples of historical matriarchal societies in places such as South America, Asia, Native American Hopi tribe, Celtic society, Germany and Estonia including in the recorded history of my own non-American society.
You can choose what belief you wish to subscribe to, and I respect your choice. However facts are facts:
Among anthropologists of science within academia there is no question all societies have been patriarchal including the one we live in right now. I am well versed in the anthropological studies on this, very very well versed. Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriarchy
Scroll to "History and distribution" and read the following quote:
"Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal.[59][60][61] According to J. M. Adovasio, Olga Soffer, and Jake Page, no true matriarchy is known actually to have existed.[55] Anthropologist Joan Bamberger argued that the historical record contains no primary sources on any society in which women dominated.[62] Anthropologist Donald Brown's list of human cultural universals (viz., features shared by nearly all current human societies) includes men being the "dominant element" in public political affairs,[63] which he asserts is the contemporary opinion of mainstream anthropology.[64] There are some disagreements and possible exceptions. A belief that women's rule preceded men's rule was, according to Haviland, "held by many nineteenth-century intellectuals".[5] The hypothesis survived into the 20th century and was notably advanced in the context of feminism and especially second-wave feminism, but the hypothesis is mostly discredited today, most experts saying that it was never true.[64]"
I took anthropological studies in UCLA and even the female teacher there outright told the classroom that there are no examples of true matriarchal societies. Also be careful about studies promoted by the feminist agenda as cited by the section above, don't let those articles (they are all over google) lead you astray.
There is a lot of false misguided information on the internet about this topic but if you dig deeply or actually study this topic (as I did) in academia you will find the cold hard truth.
Either way you can still subscribe to your belief despite what the scientific literature has found. Science is not always correct, but be aware about whether or not you're subscribing to that belief because of evidence or because of desire.
My own experiences with fighting have not given me a fear of men in general, but they have certainly contributed to a caution that I have around certain types of men - in particular, around men who have either an animalistic concern with territoriality and status, a socioeconomic desperation that makes them willing to rob outsiders, or both. I try to steer clear not only of men of this type but also of entire demographics and parts of the world in which they are common.
This is sort of true. I'll talk about the aspect that is true. What is true is that men are an order of magnitude stronger than women on average. What isn't true is the violence part. Women are actually more violent then men and the reasoning is simple.
It's because men are stronger will do more damage if they get violent so men have a tendency to hold back. I don't know if you dealt with women a lot socially, but when women get frustrated they're more likely to pound you or push you with their pathetic little fists. They often have much less ability to control themselves.
This is supported by statistics: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/women-are-mo... which should be taken with a grain of salt as violence from women against men is highly highly under reported.
The caveat here is that when it comes to actual damage men do far more greater damage, meaning that when a man actually does decide to lash out at a woman the damage is far greater and the crime far more severe. Outside of specific studies the severe crimes are the only ones that are reported. However, make no mistake, within studies that account for this bias, the numbers show women are more likely to be violent. In fact even those "territorial" men you talk about actually literally hold back when there's a woman around. There is no equal treatment here.
>My own experiences with fighting have not given me a fear of men in general, but they have certainly contributed to a caution that I have around certain types of men - in particular, around men who have either an animalistic concern with territoriality and status, a socioeconomic desperation that makes them willing to rob outsiders, or both. I try to steer clear not only of men of this type but also of entire demographics and parts of the world in which they are common.
Have you had much encounters with women? Even in dating and going to the club practically every aspect of their lives is centered around safety and caution. They rarely go out alone. Always with another man friend or with other groups of women (three at least) and when in bars or clubs even women who are strangers are always watching each others backs.
This is despite the very true fact that Men are actually much more likely to be the target of violence from other drunk men then women are when going to bars or clubs. The fear women have is biological and inbuilt as valid defenses for the more savage hunter and gatherer era. It is currently an outmoded standard of behavior that is no longer as relevant in modern society. But biology is biology and we are slaves to our biology.
Additionally it could be that women have these defenses because the consequences are much more severe. While a man is more likely to suffer from a violent attack from other men and women then a woman herself would, if a woman should get unlucky enough to suffer from an attack the consequences are extreme. This would be an argument in favor of your point of view, but still in support of the fact that women behave this way because of biology not reasoning. The biology is just an "reasonable" evolutionary response to the environmental pressure.
Just like how these people are seeking someone to blame, you are seeking the same when you blame the media. It's not just the media, what's going on here is something we're all responsible for.
The phenomenon isn't something created by the media and deployed into society. The origins of cancel culture and most of this outrage come from extremist leftist elements from students in college campuses. The media just made the spreading of this phenomenon faster.
You can't really blame social media either. Because we control what goes onto social media. We're responsible for the news on our social feeds.
Either a person accepts extreme, but very unlikely, risk by exercising perfect candor with everyone or they decide to clam up around people lower on the 'oppression hierarchy' which costs them almost nothing to do.
Why would any rational actor not choose option B unless they're getting some reward great enough to offset the risk of option A?
All power is fleeting.
All power is contextual.
Any one who tries to deny these truths, is attempting some manner of deception to further their own power at someone else's expense.
A much more realistic and likely outcome, and a far less hysterical perspective than yours, is that the needle was way too far one way, now people are learning to cope with it shifting, and if we try to be more empathetic, perhaps getting help when we need to, we can shift it to a better place than it was before.
How do I know this? Because identical dynamics play over and over, change is scary, even if it is for the better, and people have opposed it on similar grounds -- it would lead to absurdities and worst outcomes for everyone involved -- since time immemorial. For example, see some arguments against women suffrage from just over a hundred years ago [1]:
> Because the acquirement of the Parliamentary vote would logically involve admission to Parliament itself, and to all Government offices. It is scarcely possible to imagine a woman being Minister for War, and yet the principles of the Suffragettes involve that and many similar absurdities.
> Because Woman Suffrage is based on the idea of the equality of the sexes, and tends to establish those competitive relations which will destroy chivalrous consideration.
And, of course, women do not want the vote [2]
The belief that we can -- and must -- work tirelessly change the world by, say, allowing humans to fly and even reach other planets, but when it comes to how people should speak to one another, well, that's too difficult to change, there's no point in trying, and if we try then the outcome will obviously be bad, just seems so bizarre.
[1]: https://www.johndclare.net/Women1_ArgumentsAgainst.htm
[2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1903/09/why-wom...
> And, of course, women do not want the vote
Please keep this sort of flamebait out of your HN posts. It's guaranteed to make everything worse, and you can make your substantive points without it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
As for how shitty this thread is, I've spent the last several hours posting dozens of comments, feebly trying to do something about that. All I'm asking you (and others) is not to make it worse yet. Gratuitous provocation takes discussion straight to failure modes. We're all worse off if that happens.
How that's a reason not to make substantive points, or what it has to do with SV, I'm not following. The vast majority of HN is far away from SV, all over the world, and I've never seen a correlation between posts being shitty and posts being from SV. On the present topic there is probably a mild negative correlation, just because people in SV have been through so many iterations of this discussion, for so many more years than most places, that they're less likely to get activated with naive outrage.
People who feel strongly on topics routinely use language like "putrid horror show" to justify their own breaking of the site guidelines and making a discussion even worse than it already is. This sort of "why bother" / "fuck it" attitude is a big part of why things are so bad to begin with; it leads people to create the situation they deplore. No one wants to look at the "putridity" of their own contributions—the problem is always caused by other, never by self.
The only solution I can see to this is to prioritize taking care of the commons, regardless of how bad things are or you feel they are.
What I hear you saying is that it's already gone to hell, so it doesn't matter what you do. Actually it matters a lot what you do. Every user here needs to abide by the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Bringing up "Jewish Question" is singularly unhelpful and more gratuitous provocation. It seems to me that you're the main person framing this thread as "Woman Question" to begin with, then using that to justify pouring kerosene of your own. That's not cool.
What I've noticed is that users with strong ideological passions tend to describe as "putrid" and "cesspool" and so on, any discussion in which their own ideology isn't imposed as the dominant one. That's understandable, but it's not a realistic demand. HN is a large forum which is as divided on ideological topics as any other large population sample—moreover this population sample is all over the world, which unfortunately makes people far more prone to interpret others' statements as "putrid" without it even dawning on anyone that that's a factor.
Much as I might wish it, we don't have the power to change how divided this community is. All we can do is look for ways to nudge users into having thoughtful discussion despite divisions. Everyone has a different sense of what that might look like, and we can talk about how to do that, but we don't have the power to make people agree.
> As an investor, of course I clam up. I spend my days looking at the world in terms of risk-adjusted returns and cost benefit analyses, so why would I take a human capital risk? My entire business is based on my reputation and I've seen what happens to the people who get comments like "not the best with Jews at conferences" ... I can count on two hands the number of Jews I would feel comfortable giving the exact same feedback to as I would a non-Jew.
> I appreciate the effort to think of a better word than antisemitism. My question is, is this even antisemitism at all? How many people can get publicly denounced as “antisemites” and have their life ruined because they didn’t speak carefully enough, before it is simply just “smart” rather than “antisemitic” to be extra careful with how you speak to Jews.
> Imagine what it's like being the intended target and not just "collateral damage". It's not a problem that non-Jews are nervous to be candid but it's a problem that Jews are feeling the secondary effects of that?
In response, you made a bunch of quotes in which you replaced the word "women" with "Jews". I just spent several minutes trying to track down those comments before I realized that you were pulling that trick. I'm really shocked that you would stoop to that.
The flamewar trope "I'm going to replace $group1 with $group2 just to show how $xist your comment is" is one of the most common. Usually it's people on the other ideological side who do that, and often garden-variety trolls. It is a strong marker of cheap flamewar and a good example of how the ideological enemies who perpetuate these flamewars actually resemble each other more than they do anyone else.
It's unfortunately all too easy and common for people to mistake a divided community for a "putrid horror show", dominated by demons [1] or, as the internet likes to call them, "terrible persons", when in reality most people here just have different backgrounds and experiences from one another [2]. I'm not saying that's the only factor—anyone can scan my moderation comments in this thread to find examples to the contrary (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613942). But I still think the HN guidelines are right to say "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." ...and I think that if you took that guideline more to heart, you might see the bulk of the thread differently. (I don't mean the long tail of trolls and flames—those are always with us.)
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098
This is kind of the end result we're heading for, where you can only talk candidly with people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy.
Seems pretty clearly gratuitous flamebait. Oppression hierarchy? We're heading to where nobody can frankly speak to anyone? This is 'first they came', in different words and is equally cheap and dumb.
BTW, I am not talking about the actual article. It's fine. I'm merely talking about the ensuing "debate."
You threat women exactly as everybody else. See? Wasn't that hard.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Huh, and here I was under the impression that you moderated both sides equally.
Do you honestly think the situation improves if the discussion is censored here? Whether you like it or not these industry discussions, and much worse, are happening elsewhere and censoring relatively timid discussions like this only makes matters worse. There are 490 comments at the time of this post and I'd bet the vast majority of them are relatively benign.
I can't say that I have ever in my life noticed much of the Anglo-Saxon gender, race, and other such politics in real life and I remain sceptical as to what extent it is actually true within Anglo-Saxon offices, for I find that all “sides” of the issue seem to offer very different, contradictory experiences, and mostly reads as a rather exagerated an implausible story of how bad it is for one's own side.
Though there might be a kernel of truth behind some of it, most of it reads as though the writers see boogymen, and unreasonable fear, and I will say that when actual hard statistics be available, they almost always paint a very difficult picture than what is complained about in all these “culture war” discussions, and that certainly goes for all sides.
When I was younger I learned so much and established many valuable relationships by having discussions on public services/websites. Many legends in the field were quite accessible on public sites and mailing lists. My life would be much worse if I hadn't had those experiences and it feels like a lot of younger people that don't have connections to the SV bubble are now going to miss out on similar experiences.
This isn't to say that we should be tolerant of everything but it definitely feels like we've swung too far in the opposite direction.
I really don't know if this is a positive change for how policy gets made, but it is happening actively right now.
I understand what you're getting at though. I just made a claim that people in policy circles are writing things under pseudonyms. You want evidence for this (justifiably), but this would require me to essentially out the pen names. Sorry, not going to happen.
What happens if someone Googles the pseudonym? Or tries to contact it? Do they use an anonymous email address or just not allow it?
The answer to this question is yes.
I'm a pretty active person online and I genuinely do not understand your concern. If you want to say something controversial online, just do so anonymously like you are doing now. If you want to give somebody candid advice I'm not sure why you'd do that in public anyways.
> Wasn't most "legitimate discussion" already happening in private already?
Probably, but I think there was still much more interesting discussion going on publicly in years past. It's anecdotal but I've definitely seen a huge spike in how many of my colleagues are retreating entirely to private communities and most of them never make public comments anymore. That's disappointing to me because I think there's a lot of value in having these discussions in the open with respected and accomplished names attached. It also gives a level of perceived accessibility that I think is important.
Really? Prior to anonymous Internet comments there were even fewer discussions. I think recent years is when we’ve finally began to understand how people really feel.
Pop culture and politics is where the mob culture resides.
I vehemently disagree. In my experience, a very substantial number of them fear the mob because there's so much at stake and nobody is interested in falling on their sword. Many people want to talk politics and philosophy and those subjects are often hard to avoid unless conversation is heavily restricted. I've had tons of conversations about algorithms that naturally turn into discussions of political and philosophical ramifications. A substantial amount of the screening that goes into accessing private communities revolves directly around likelihood of charitable interpretation, secrecy and behaviour on public social networks.
The second one, which I only use occasionally, is a private Android/iOS app that is very similar to Signal group chats.
I've heard of quite a few others but I don't have first hand experience with them.
Feedback is best received when you relate to the person who is giving it and you trust the giver has your best interest at heart.
While the "current environment" may make it so women are more weary of men (and thus less likely to receive feedback) - I think there is a stronger current.
White male investors see people outside of their social group and realize that their advice might not be well received- not because of a flame war, but simply because they don't look like them. I'm fully convinced this effect is visible with all mixes of social groups (race, gender, religion, national origin, job family).
This effect sucks, and we should be looking for ways to unite ourselves to other people so that we can receive hard advice and also give hard advice.
The risk of an unpredictable, catastrophic event for a man is higher than it has ever been.
I don't think that's a good analogy.
That's why you see people looking for smaller, more trust-bound online communities to associate with.
They're called cars. Houses are packed tighter and there's more cars per household than when I was growing up (maybe due to everyone being double income now). Streets are also narrower and most have street parking, creating visibility issues. Go check out a development than went up 40-50 years ago compared to one that went up in the last 5 years. The difference is pretty stark and pretty hostile to kids running around doing kid stuff.
I don't think media's focus on bad guys has nearly the impact that the enormous increase in cars has had.
We live a block from the playground, close enough that I can almost see it from our window, but you can't get there without crossing the street. So our kids (7y, 5y) can only go there with a grown up. I've worked on teaching them how to cross the street safely, but they're just not good enough at checking for cars yet.
https://www.kidsandcars.org/how-kids-get-hurt/frontovers/
https://www.kidsandcars.org/how-kids-get-hurt/backovers/
I suspect both elements play a role. How big a role I have little idea.
Sadly I think it may be for profits, for survival's sake. The media business is very different now than it was pre-Zuckerberg.
There was one black female mentee who I noticed was timid in taking credit for her work. I had recently attended a diversity panel where someone in a similar role as me said that in a similar situation, and her advice to her mentee was "Think about what a white man would do" and everyone applaud such an insightful advice. So identifying such an opportunity, I said the exact same thing word for word, basically "I see you're hesitating to take credit for your work. Think about what a white man would do."
Immediately after saying that, I could tell it wasn't taken well, and she asked "what does that mean?" I couldn't come up with an answer for that which wouldn't be taken in a really bad way, so I backpedaled. She later reported me to an administrative person who luckily felt it was too vague to file a serious report about, but told me to watch what I say.
But I do have a solution (my trick). From that point on, I definitely give more subtle advice unless they have passed my test, which is I see how they react to situations where they could give the benefit of the doubt to others in vague situations. Sometimes, I'll bring up a past story about another anonymous person and see if they are outraged and want to get them in trouble. Only the ones who remark that they probably had good intentions, and don't react too strongly, I'll give more candid advice to.
I guess you yourself repeating the same woke quite took away the uniqueness of the idea as it would be articulated by a non privledged individual.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-15/carry-yourself-with-t...
Of course everyone should do their best in being sensitive in their ways of expressing themselves. But many people could definitely show a little bit more generosity in their interpretations and not jump on every chance to interpret something like racism or sexism.
Resorting to advice that consists entirely of race/gender stereotyping isn't “mature, respectful language”.
What was wrong with a "be bolder"/"be more assertive"/"don't be afraid of taking credit for your work"?
I don't see those as useful since it doesn't provide the person any actual guidance or reference point. What does assertive mean? What should I exactly do? How do I do it? "Act like X" provides a well known reference point that they can use to adjust their behavior based on. They can remember all the times they've seen X do something in a similar situation and then just act like that.
If you want to make it super explicit, come up with examples. "Be bolder, for example for this project I saw you doing 80% of the work, you should get to headline the presentation and have top billing on the authors page".
"Act like X" is also potentially useful, if you make it explicit. Explicit is not "Act like a white man" (whaaaa?). Explicit: is "Act like Bob, for example do you remember when HR said he couldn't have a new screen and he insisted"?
It's just an extension of the classic "show, don't tell".
"Be bolder" is different than "what do you think a bold person would do?"
I have had many conversations with people going through a tough time and unsure of what to do or how to feel in a situation and there is this trick to getting people to think differently that almost always works... ask the question
"What would a reasonable person do in your situation?"
Suddenly the person having trouble coming up with the answer "What should I do?" has a perfect answer to "What would a reasonable person do?"
It's a psychological trick that goes after how one thinks about one's self and how one thinks about someone else being quite different. If you refocus your attention to view yourself from an external objective, you often end up with much better judgement.
Even if "what a white man would do" wasn't emotionally charged (and it is), it's not a good way to make the point.
Look at how often people tweak, clarify, and edit their comments even here on hacker news. So you'll probably just end up with "stifled" advice (using the terminology from the article), as you can see with all these suggestions in this thread.
If I was giving advice to someone who was too assertive and taking too much credit, I would never say "Think about what a black woman would do." Things like this are so transparently racist it shouldn't even need to be explained. You are simultaneously characterizing a race and gender of people and also telling someone else to act like a different race and gender.
The reason the advice was poorly received is because it is nonsense. The recipient of the advice asked the perfect question - "what does it mean to act like a white man?" The OP, when asked, also doesn't seem to know what it means. I'd say there is a lesson there - don't repeat something just because it was will received when you originally heard it. You may not understand it. It may be something of an emperor's new clothes situation where nobody can question the person who gave the original advice, but that doesn't make it good.
Saying that white men are confident and black women aren't is simultaneous bi-directional racism. You are generalizing white men and black women AND telling black women to act more white?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613528
That it is unclear is obvious in that the person using the stereotype couldn't identify the concrete, actionable behavior they intended to encourage when directly questioned.
Are they implying white men are smarter/better so they always take the right decisions? If that's what they're doing, they're also implying, in this case, she, as a black woman, is not as smart as a white man.
I'm a white man surrounded by mostly white people working on a field with mostly white men and I can't say what a white man would do in certain situations because we're all different and we all think differently.
Why not just say what you mean without the racial stereotypes?
"Graceful interpretation" does not mean that you ignore the advice and substitute for it what would have been good advice.
> Why not just say what you mean without the racial stereotypes?
Nothing is going to win cheap applause at a diversity panel than saying "white man bad".
I suffer a bit from imposter syndrome, so I completely get what the GP is getting at, it was just phrased ambiguously.
Here is a disambiguated version: "Imagine what a privileged, entitled, overconfident, upper-midlle-class cishet white dude would do, and do that."
When you speak, people pay attention! Comic books pander to your adolescent fantasies! Your doohickey is the greatest thing since sliced bread! In fact, it's the greatest thing since unsliced bread! You're a frickin genius for dreaming it up! Your LoMoSo strategy is going to make billions for you, the few early employees that don't quit, and the VC that you choose to let invest! You're making the world a better place through scalable fault-tolerant distributed databases with asset transactions! The world is your oyster, and everyone who laughed at you in high school is going to be sorry! Bwahahaha!
Er, ahem. Pardon, got just a little carried away there.
Anyhoo... that advice has nothing to do with capability, talents, skills, or accomplishments, and everything to do with self-promotion and attitude. If you don't toot your own horn, who will?
"How do you feel it went when people were talking about the work done on the project?" Allow them to chat ..."Do you think the credit was equally shared out?"
> I see you're hesitating to take credit for your work
Could easily be followed up with actionable items to take credit for her work: do a company/department wide presentation for instance. Instead you gave her vague non-advice. I'm a white man and I have no idea what a white man would do because I know a ton of different white men who would all do very different things.
This seems to fit the definition of cargo cult.
You clearly had good intentions, but you can't go around saying phrases without being able to back them up. This should be familiar to you from technical situations - consider: "prefer composition over inheritance" - reasonable advice, but be prepared to explain yourself, not just parrot it.
I doubt anyone out there will have a similar visceral reaction to discussing code architecture.
In what way can someone disagree with you about the offensiveness of something you say, without you labelling them as "intent on outrage"?
Even a single comment made with ill intent I don't think would push me all the way to pursuing professional recourse, not without me trying to 'fix' things on my own first.
I do wonder if some boss in the future will only employ straight white males simply to avoid people "offending" others (it's hard to offend a straight white male in this new woke ideology). Of course this has the opposite effect to what the woke seem to want, but this is the world we have built ourselves.
Let's say you never employ any women in your org: this means you never have to deal with pregnancies and lengthy maternity leave, hospital visits, etc. Straight away you have an advantage over your competition simply due to the extra man-hours (heh!). In software dev I've never encountered a situation where having women devs would make a blind bit of difference to the outcome.
Of course this is deeply unfair on women, and we all want to live in a fairer society, I just don't think the woke ideology is the solution.
I remember car companies working this out back in the eighties. The companies that understood that women have their own needs in a car that men did not share, yet women are a important part of family purchase decisions, did better.
BUT you have a point, the market is 50% plus women and you are missing a lot of valuable influence and competence.
Just think about sports teams.
As a white male from a poor southern family (not very tolerant) I've had to learn a few hard lessons on similar fronts. I know I don't have a good gauge for what is and isn't ok, even now. Given that in many occasions even mirroring words or behaviors can be a no-no, the only way I've learned that is 100% effective at not causing problems is shutting up, which I'm generally pretty bad at. Luckily I've had mostly understanding and light hearted coworkers, so I haven't been outright ruined yet, but I can think of more than one occasion that likely would have turned my life upside down if the audience was less sensitive to my intent.
Diversity CAN BE a competitive advantage if everyone else is carving out a strict path. But if everyone is extremely diverse then heterogeneity could actually be the competitive advantage, allowing a business to specialize more or take advantage of certain economies of scale etc. etc.
Also, I find that more often than not, too much diversity leads to internal conflict because ideas differ too much, which can turn into a competitive disadvantage.
I used to work in a diversity company where white males were usually not promoted nor valued, or those who were promoted were absolutely excellent. I specifically remember having trouble explaining a bug to a boss, then I noticed she didn’t know what an HTTP header was. It happens, when you’re promoted so fast that you don’t spend time as a dev.
Anyway, exited, created my company, but seriously, I’m extremely bitter about diversity, it’s just a way to enslave us and let us run the rat’s race while collecting taxes and job creation on us. They ain’t gonna win anything if they push white males so much out that they are bitter by the time they create their company. Racism is just a reaction to being treated badly.
People need to be tolerant of casual racism and sexism, up to a point. People have been raised like this, advised to to act like this, they need a chance to learn. It is tough on those on the receiving end, and unjust. But the world will not change over night and the prejudice is so ingrained at every level of our society.
This poster here shows that prejudice can be easily overcome if not combined with bigotry
well ... interpreting everything in the worst way possible will lead to the outcome that the poster will never say anything again. And that will help no one!
Regarding why you can't just say the same thing word for word, that's because shared context matters.
This is basic social skills. If you don't have the same shared background and context, then it's unclear if you mean one thing or the other.
So when one woman says "Think about what a white man would do", to another woman, there's the implication that they're talking about their shared experiences regarding society's expectations around women.
When a man says that to a woman, especially it's a white man saying that to a black woman, your contexts and backgrounds are so wildly different that surface area of what you could mean is quite large.
So when you had the chance to clarify yourself and you backpedaled, that made it look even worse because it implied that you had bad intentions and were trying to take your words back.
So yes, it's true. You can't say the same thing word for word as one person say to another if you and the other person do not share the same contexts.
That's...horrible advice generally, though there are specific circumstances where it might be useful, and it is tragic if it was an example used in a diversity panel as anything but a negative example without a whole lot of context because it (1) appeals to race/gender stereotypes, and (2) requires, for it to even approximate actionable advice, for the mentor and mentee to share race/gender stereotypes. In fact, I've been to lots of such panels/trainings, and fairly commonly seen exactly that used as a negative example.
What would be more useful if your first instinct is to give this advice is to first unpack what behavior you are stereotyping as white/male behavior that you actually want to encourage, and then just advise that behavior without appeal to race and gender stereotypes.
My advice to you: "Think about what you would have told a white man"
Well that leads to something like "Toughen Up, It's Part of the Job".
I don't think it helps to activly missunderstand people, when they are trying to be helpful EVEN if their trying is in the wrong. Try to think about the intention and maybe ask what they really meant by that.
I hope we can all agree that in 90% of the cases we can hear on the tone in the voice what the poster meant. If unclear ask and if racism occurs report the ** out of him :D
In this case a simple followup of "you deserve more credit and I want you to feel able to advocate for yourself" would have cleared up the confusion and avoided a lot of trouble, and you wouldn't have had to invent a story-telling system in order to filter out people who believe in accountability.
This does contain the essence of your advice; namely, to take credit for work more often, and or more clearly.
My approach is very different.
And I have had the pleasure of mentoring women into male dominated roles a time or two. Fortunately, we were able to establish trust and another male coworker involved in mentoring worked in a similar way. There were challenges, but we made them team ones, not just hers. That made a big difference, IMHO.
What we did was take gender out of it early on, unless it made sense.
In this case, the advice would be, "you should take credit more." And the follow on would be ways to do that and to support the person who will benefit from doing it. That can be as simple as some recognition and sharing later:
"I saw you go for it. Nice! So, how do you feel about it? What happened? Will you do it again?" Etc...
Where gender does come up, that discussion almost always involved a telling of things. And the reason, explained if need be, is just simple understanding.
"How is it for you?"
And that helps with, "what if it were me?"
And then advice makes sense, because there is context, a shared basis.
That is not always needed. Hard to say when it is. But when it is, having it really helps get past or through whatever the challenge is.
I have been fortunate to have women in my life who will share, who I have worked with, who I have helped, and who have helped me. And the things they share have highlighted the fact that their experience is different. Same goes for many attributes, race, beauty, etc...
Often, the barrier to sharing and understanding boils down to some shame, or blame, or admission of weakness, or the perception of making excuses. And while those things can be part of the discussion, it is unhealthy to presume they are, and my experience shows me that presumption happens more than it should.
And that all contributes to how hard this matter is, or can be.
I am a guy, and have found myself discriminated against for seriously considering, "what if it were me?" Or for asking, "How is it for her, or them?"
It is almost like a betrayal, or threat... something I am expressing poorly. Sorry for that, I just do not have precise words.
Often we are asking people different from us to see things from a more familiar point of view. More familiar to us, but what good is that when it simply is foreign to them?
I resolved it this way: we should be seeking a better perception of what it is like for people very different from us. Mutual understanding and respect, consideration.
In my view, there should be no shame in any of that. But there is! And all this is harder.
Since that time, I have paid a lot more attention to these dynamics. Barriers to understanding one another better present real costs and risks that can be avoided, again in my view.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_the_white_man
Anything you say can be taken as offensive and the crowds bay for blood.
The ironic thing is that this social behavior is what drives corporate culture to stronger conservativism.
It's too easy to say the wrong thing and take some serious heat.
Every opinion has an easily triggered mob attached to it now, so some mob group will target you if you get any attention upon you.
It's amazing how fast the US became a 99% censored nation (either self-censored, mob cancelled, or censored by big tech), terrified, buried under authoritarian & hyper angry mobs desperate to attack other people. It happened within a single decade.
It's going to get a lot worse yet. I used to tell myself that living in the US was worthwhile despite its flaws because at least we had tremendous free speech protections (and most countries do not), and that's no longer true de facto. The US is arguably now worse - in reality, not the pretend notion that free speech still technically exists - than more speech censoring nations like Canada.
There are any number of ways person B could be more qualified than person A to be the CEO.
If an investor is going to give good-on-average advice in one case but not the other almost identical situation, the author is right to be concerned.
People will say "It's pretty unbelievable that happened, because no sane individual would ever condone something so extreme."
It might be witches in one generation, flying saucers, communists in another, Jews in another, or blacks; the possibilities are inexhaustible. We don't know what the next Insanity will be, only that there will be one.
I have a hunch that, roll on a hundred years, everything will turn full circle and we'll be back to segregation of the sexes. "Of course the whole thing was a folly," future generation will claim, "what absurd notion led them to the idea that men and women were the same anyway?"
Each generation has the conceit that it is more enlightened than the last, little realising that they are no smarter than the one before.
But that’s beside the point of the article. Ultimately I think it’s on men to learn how to handle giving candid advice in a non-sexist manner. This investor just considered his investment not enough to be worthy bothering to try to find a way to give the same advice in a non-sexist way.
My final take of the article is: founders, don’t listen to advice made by investors who invested a small enough portion of their portfolio to even care if your chances as a company to be successful improve or not.
And how would that be in this case?
I actually fail to see how you can respectfully tell someone you think they should swap roles and be sexist. Sure, if your whole argument is that "XXX isn't coming of agressive enough to survive in this boys game" then you might be accused of sexism...for some reason
The fear of a hypothetical "someone" taking something "totally reasonable" out of context is, in my experience, held mainly by people who have a private definition of "totally reasonable" not held by the majority and who'd like to continue holding it without consequences.
Companies with an explicit diversity and inclusion statement on their job applications get more minority applicants but hire proportionally less minority candidates, speculation range from smug interviewers to interviewees being too concerned with being themselves.
Everyone playing the suppression olympics loses in the end.
I'm curious: do you have a source for that?
I appreciate the effort to think of a better word than sexism. My question is, is this even sexism at all? How many men can get publicly denounced as “sexists” and have their life ruined because they didn’t speak carefully enough, before it is simply just “smart” rather than “sexist” to be extra careful with how you speak to women.
To take the example to an extreme just to illustrate the point: If, in a hypothetical world, men served jail time for making eye contact with women, would it be sexist for men to stare at their feet when women are around?
I am 100% convinced that sexism does exist and is not all that uncommon (I’ve seen my wife deal with it a bit in the workplace). I’m just not convinced this is an example of it. Seems more like it’s the “safe” choice for a man in 2021. Both men and women would benefit if we worked to make it not that way.
There is a danger of getting overly semantic, but also a danger of ignoring the importance of semantics to perspective here. Sexism as opposed to sexists. Sexism, using the term as the the GP does, is how they behave towards or speak to her. That's what sexism is regardless of why it is. It affects her or the workplace the same way whether it is because of "exclusionary assholes" or unintended chilling effects.
Gravity in a box is equivalent to acceleration.
That said, you have a point too. From your (me also) perspective, there's a snookered conclusion to this story. Inasmuch as Twitter mobs are scary, some people are opting out of joining the girls for a drink.. sometimes advisably.
This is incredibly flawed. It can never be behaviour observed in a vacuum. A behaviour's motivation in context is the only thing to observe and - potentially - classify as sexism.
If your perspective is one where you care about "culprits," and whether they are good or bad... motivations matter.
If you're characterising the system, not judging culprits.. you don't care about motivations, historical reasons or such. You just care about how the system behaves.
A sexist office is one where people are treated differently based on sex. That could be because of office rules. It could be because of cultural or religious reasons. It could be because of #metoo. Etc. Say you walk into that office, experience or observe sexism and walk out. You don't know why it's sexist, but you do know that it's a sexist office.
I get that you don't want everyone inside that office painted as sexists. Maybe they're not. That doesn't mean that it's not a sexist workplace. This isn't a criminal trial.
Criminal trials are the way they are because that's the best way we know to find out truth. If you don't care about truth, then just say so directly. No need to mention whether something's a criminal trial or not.
Please don't post flamebait to HN. Nothing good can come of this.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: please don't use HN for ideological battle. You've been doing it repeatedly, and it's not what this site is for. We ban accounts that are using HN primarily for this (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...), and your account looks close to that line if not over it.
I've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613374.
Over recent years I've read so much about women being passed over, cut off, terms like "microaggressions", women getting less talking time in meetings, etc., that's it's made me extremely self conscious.
It's not even that I'm afraid of getting in any actual trouble if I say or do something wrong, it's just that I'm generally already somewhat anxious about how I behave around others and this has made me extremely aware of any time I might be too harsh, not really listen to someone, etc., that I've probably gotten overly sensitive.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This happens in the media a lot too (left and right). A single sentence (or even part of a sentence) can be plucked out of an interview, shown out of context and boom - the person seems like a monster. Someone might have best intentions, but not be very polished in expressing them. So why risk talking at all, unless we are 100% sure it cannot be misconstrued in any way? It is just easier to keep quiet. Which results in loss of lively, valuable discussions.
Some comedian (forgot who it was) mentioned that they don't like performing in colleges anymore as the audience is too sensitive. That is the situation we are in.
Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock have stated that they are not willing to perform at colleges. There are probably more, but with smaller names.
I've only heard it mentioned within gaming, and it typically means more than just bathroom (Encompassing instead a bunch of different biological necessities like bathroom, hydration, eating)
First they came...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Imagine what it's like being the intended target and not just "collateral damage". It's not a problem that men are nervous to be candid but it's a problem that women are feeling the secondary effects of that?
Maybe if this author was encouraging twitter lynch mobs with scant evidence it would be an apt point, but I don't think there is any sign of that. She doesn't owe the world anything because some other women did something.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Btw, I still have not met a female VC: after 22 years in SV.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Not the dozens of other posts throughout this thread of people making unequivocal statements about how A) one cannot speak to women or minorities anymore without being accused of discrimination, B) how "every" (or some variation of that summary) minority/woman are hurting their cause with constant insistence of discrimination?
Dang, just because someone is civil, does not mean they are logical. Just because they are logical, doesn't mean they are correct.
There are folks all throughout this thread right now that are making broad general summaries of misogynistic and racist talking points, but you are not warning ANY of htem.
As we increasingly see, witch hunts are already possible by deliberately misinterpreting written statements like mails or bug tracker messages.
I would not want to get into a he-said-she-said real life situation. Mike Pence understood this early.
I ask because if you took that same attitude towards race, you could easily be accused of colorblind racism.
To be clear, I'm not saying that I do treat all people equally, regardless of their race, gender, sexuality, etc. I grew up in an environment filled with stereotypes, and they do seep through. I can only strive to avoid having that bias affect how I treat people. If it does leak through, I try to recognize it and do better in the future.
Some people would go as far as to say this is a cornerstone of white supremacy.
Similarly, if someone's background (say gender) results in fewer mentorship opportunities because of the ol' boys club, I'm happy to put in some effort to put them in touch with people.
The point I am making is not about whether you are racist though, it’s that saying that you treat all races equally is enough to be classed as racist, regardless of your actual behavior.
When I was young I had something similar happen. A woman went around telling people she had slept with me. We hadn't. Nobody believed my side of the story since "why would she lie?". This caused a rift with my best friend, who had a crush on her. I lost my best friend due to a lie I couldn't disprove.
I don't think that treating people poorly because you're worried that not doing so could hurt your career is the right thing to do. It might be pragmatic in your case, but so is taking money out of a wallet you find on the ground.
> I lost my best friend due to a lie I couldn't disprove.
You lost your best friend because your best friend didn't trust you and because someone lied. None of that is your fault. Sometimes the world is a shitty place with shitty people. That isn't a reason to add to that shittiness by refusing to treat women in the workplace as you would men.
I've returned every wallet I've ever found and I've never taken any money from them. Doing so poses no risk to myself. It's very easy to stand on your high horse and criticise others but after you've been in the situation of being accused of something it changes your opinion on certain things. I hope that you never have to deal with it.
That's beyond the pale. I've banned this account for reasons explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613795 above, and everywhere else you'll find moderation comments on this site.
Creating accounts to break HN's rules with will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't.
I have been told that I can’t do my job which includes negotiating with LGBTQ+ companies because I am an “old, white, cis guy and there is always an unfair power dynamic there” just because of my identity. It is discrimination plain and simple, but I literally stand to have my career derailed if I fight back. One accusation and I don’t get hired again.
I joined the company because I believed, and still believe in company mission which is LGBTQ+ focused.
There is no room for allies at some companies and they silence opinions they don’t like. It hurts everyone.
> A cisgender person (sometimes cissexual, informally abbreviated cis) is one whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth. For example, someone who identifies as a woman and was identified as female at birth is a cisgender woman. The word cisgender is the antonym of transgender.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender [2] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=cisgende...
Imagine if we had specific terms for someone who doesn't shoplift, or who doesn't eat other people's pets.
Amazing what passes for "discourse" on this site.
IANAL, and I don't know what "LGBTQ+ company" means, but if you believe that you're not being allowed to negotiate with other companies because of your age, race, and gender, you can (and should) sue for discrimination.
"It Hurt Itself in Its Confusion!"
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/it-hurt-itself-in-its-confusi...
A common theme I’ve noticed in these groups is their penchant for using the term “cis male”. Doesn’t matter if you’re straight or gay, the hate is still the same.
It’s better to just walk away from these situations and groups.
I find this a little frustrating, they’ve noticed a pattern of behaviour that concerns them in an area they are clearly invested in - yet they have no thoughts or suggestions on how to address this? Is it possible they are not offering such thoughts because of the same issue they have highlighted in the article?
Maybe the problem is real but they just don’t have as solution?
Yes, the observation's valid, but... I don't know. When the conversation keeps happening the same way, over may topics, you have to figure there's something deeper going on.
Can you say what you think it is?
1. Criticism is fast and easy compared to thinking up a solution; building the solution; trying to show a solution works; etc. Criticism has the benefit that it can be directed to any sub-part and does not have to, necessarily, take in (or understand) the whole.
2. Criticism is, generally, perceived as "socially safer" than creation. For example, it's easier to say "I don't like X or Y about something" than it is to say "I think that X or Y should be changed to A or B." Proposing the change exposes one to criticism.
3. Criticism, in many ways (thinking of many college courses here), is what folks are often trained in as compared to creation. I think an outcome is that we learn to "see" faults more than we learn to "see" solutions. To be clear, I think folks learn to create in their vocation, but outside of that, necessarily, limited sphere, folks are most often trained as critics, rather than creators.
3 is interesting though.
Thinking of _just one_ potential solution would be evidence that they are acting in good-faith.
Furthermore, isn't this an issue of long-standing that for some reason is still a big enough problem to raise complaints? How many decades have there been women in upper-management, let alone the C-suite? Why aren't VCs, people who are rumored to be good at analyzing businesses across their field of expertise, already aware of this weakness? Is rooting out inefficiencies only for the businesses in which they invest?
This is to say, why is this essay still necessary? I'd say it's because many men are trying to keep the old world going. Status quo.
I suggest that a VC who can't have the conversation about swapping for CEO in both "directions," who is aggrieved about the present state of business demographics enough to clam up in fear of raising controversy, is not a competent investor.
This is a Continuing Education topic for those who need it, just like RNs have to take a certain number of class-hours each year to stay up on current techniques and technologies. This essay is about and aimed at guys who don't think that their attitudes toward women need changing.
Here's a hot take: This is what happens when kids don't get bullied at school. They don't learn to build the necessary emotional circuitry and calluses to deal with emotional damage.
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/melodrama.png
I'm pretty sure this is analogous to the way you build up muscle: you don't try to squat 300 lbs, tear your hip flexors, and destroy your knees on day one. In fact, repeated injury makes you weaker.
Most social groups do have a mechanism to softly introduce low intensity conflict as play (which may help with emotional strength). Practically any group has escalating banter with escalating intimacy, for instance, permitting growth of emotional resilience in a progressive manner.
I was never bullied in school and I'm generally quite socially comfortable in many situations.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613220.
Yes, a guy could screw it up and say something potentially sexist or just dumb — but for success what someone is doing wrong needs to be expressed.