This made it to the front page (submitted by someone else) and then got deleted. Sounds like someone in power at HN doesn't like hearing what Aubrey Hirsch is saying.
I don't think so—I had tried to leave a comment on the original post and was told I couldn't comment there and the post was gone. Otherwise I might never have noticed.
There is the political content of the message and there is the tone.
I could write a pretty hyperbolic article about all of the crazy things that have happened to me because I'm a man. (e.g. being targeted for violence and being told by the authorities I have no recourse, having to assume that people I'm having a conflict with have firearms, knowing I am male and sitting on the outside and I'm the first one who is going to get hit when things go south, ...)
I... don't think that's a fair equivalence. I don't think you'd ever get death threats from tweeting about being annoyed by someone interrupting your work out to tell you you're pretty. I don't think you'd get people posting your phone # and address that they got from a people finder website because of some comics you made. I don't think you'd ever have to wonder if those plates that got thrown at you were real life incels that got radicalized and wanted to hurt you
Ever had somebody really try to kill you? I've had that happen AND I've received both death threats and physical attacks for many BS reasons such as sticking up (as a straight bystander) for the right of gay people to assemble without being subject to physical attacks. I've seen many men, even straight and white, face possible death (such as being stabbed for real and going to the hospital) for standing up to protect other people's right to be free of harassment.
I'll be the #1 person to point out that inceldom is a harmful social movement. My son lost his best friend because his friend fell under the spell of a Youtube commentator known as Wheat Waffles and won't hang out with my son because my son is taller than him.
This harmful movement feeds on the despair of young men who feel completely lost in today's world. This process starts with many boys having no exposure to effective male role models, frequently a father who is physically or emotionally absent, and then facing nothing but female teachers in preschool and elementary school which says in no uncertain terms that "education is a girl thing."
(e.g. if you fix that problem of gender imbalance in early childhood education the other problems of gender imbalance in hiring might be diminished in 20 years. if you don't you are going to be asking the exact same hand-wringing questions you are right now.)
describes the difficulty that women find in finding meaningful and committed relationships. The fact that many young men are lost is a major input to that.
As an student on love, relationships, attraction and such I'd be the first one to say it is hopeless to approach anybody working out at the gym (people riding in elevators are less defended then people at the gym) or for a man, in most circumstances, to lead with telling a young women that she's pretty.
To be receiving unwanted attention like that is a burden, but you also need to recognize that many young today aren't receiving attention, wanted or unwanted, from women or men and have no idea what to do about their situation. If they focus on career they will probably be in a much better situation by 35 just as women around that age will start wishing they were getting more attention. Many of them don't know or don't believe that their situation is going to improve in 15 years or that they can endure it... And nobody is telling them this in a way that they'll listen to or telling them anything about how to communicate about their relationship needs.
From eight months of intensively studying this subject, I'd say that this video contains more information about the kind of communication that leads to relationships that both women and men need to know than anything I've seen:
> Ever had somebody really try to kill you? I've had that happen AND I've received both death threats and physical attacks for
many BS reasons such as sticking up (as a straight bystander) for the right of gay people to assemble without being subject to physical attacks. I've seen many men, even straight and white, face possible death (such as being stabbed for real and going to the hospital) for standing up to protect other people's right to be free of harassment.
In fact I really have had that happen. It's really scary and shitty. Regardless the question was about the internet. And, if I'm understanding you correctly, both mine and your experiences came from organizing in the real world. This article is about just living on the internet and getting death threats for something as little as a tweet about having to put up with men interrupting your workouts
I share one of the most enduring things I learned from grad school.
In my second year I was teaching in an autotutorial class where we were working together to help students learn. We were overloaded one of the first nights of the semester and, in front of other people, I criticized a first year grad student (a woman) for what I thought was a poor prioritization of her work. She really "lost her shit" and broke down and cried and I felt really bad about it.
The next day the department head took me aside and explained to me that people find public criticism to be deeply humiliating and that he had learned that lesson himself the hard way. He told me that next time I have a problem like that I should take the person aside and give my criticism privately. I told him, "Yeah, you're right, I feel bad about what happened."
This guy who offended her might have made one of the lamest passes of all time. Despite that, he might have spent weeks building up his courage to do it. He is opening his heart and showing real emotional vulnerability. He's probably got no idea of how to approach somebody in a way that might be effective. He's possibly afraid he's going to grow old and be alone unless he ends up like this guy
Women believe that love is going to come to them but almost all men face the burden of making an approach and it's a really difficult thing to do that somebody might not have empathy for unless they've experienced it themselves.
It's predictable therefore, that somebody would experience it as deeply wounding that their private failure be turned into a public humiliation that could be witnessed by thousands or more people. It was bad behavior before but the stakes are vastly magnified in the age of social media. All of the time people in relationships or on the edge of relationships say humiliating things about other people on social media and it's a deeply hurtful form of bullying.
The lady involved might well think her actions were justified because "the personal is political" but I'm sure the people who made death threats would agree that their (unjustifiable) actions are justified by the same slogan.
Posting that kind of thing to twitter speaks negatively about her character. Whoever flagged this post was doing her a favor.
If was a potential employer I'd be afraid of her saying something about me, her coworkers, my customers, my vendors, etc. She might do the same thing to a boyfriend or girlfriend.
I can think of one time when a guy said something stupid to a girl at a conference, the kind of "joke" that they turn on the laugh track for on The Big Bang Theory but that isn't funny when you really say it. The girl tweeted about it and started a big controversy -- they both got fired. Your employer doesn't send you to a conference to create a huge amount of trouble.
She didn't name any names. She didn't publically humiliate anyone. She made a tweet pointing out how absurd it was that someone would interrupt her workout, make her take off her headphones, just to comment on her body. And then HE was the one who was annoyed when she just said "Yeah I know." Frankly, he sounds like an asshole
Also very typical of the HN crowd to automatically build up empathy for the man in this situation and not at all see how fucked up it is that he thought he had the right to interrupt her and THEN GET MAD AT HER when she clearly showed she didn't want it
You yelling at a first year in front of the whole class is completely different from some asshole interrupting her to make a comment and then HIM getting pissed off at her for not reciprocating. She was probably really affected by the fact that he got mad at her and made HER feel like the bad person. She probably took to Twitter to voice that frustration. And yet she avoided doxxing or naming anyone.
Also yelling at a woman in (presumably) a STEM course, where she quite likely already has to face imposter syndrome, is fucked up on multiple levels.
And regardless of all that. How does any of that justify death threats? If you're gonna say that you're not defending those death threats, then why was your point attacking her character even relevant? What were you trying to accomplish?
11 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 35.5 ms ] threadI could write a pretty hyperbolic article about all of the crazy things that have happened to me because I'm a man. (e.g. being targeted for violence and being told by the authorities I have no recourse, having to assume that people I'm having a conflict with have firearms, knowing I am male and sitting on the outside and I'm the first one who is going to get hit when things go south, ...)
I'd expect that to get flagged too.
I'll be the #1 person to point out that inceldom is a harmful social movement. My son lost his best friend because his friend fell under the spell of a Youtube commentator known as Wheat Waffles and won't hang out with my son because my son is taller than him.
This harmful movement feeds on the despair of young men who feel completely lost in today's world. This process starts with many boys having no exposure to effective male role models, frequently a father who is physically or emotionally absent, and then facing nothing but female teachers in preschool and elementary school which says in no uncertain terms that "education is a girl thing."
(e.g. if you fix that problem of gender imbalance in early childhood education the other problems of gender imbalance in hiring might be diminished in 20 years. if you don't you are going to be asking the exact same hand-wringing questions you are right now.)
Feminist author Eva Illouz
https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/03/22/why-love-hurts-eva...
describes the difficulty that women find in finding meaningful and committed relationships. The fact that many young men are lost is a major input to that.
As an student on love, relationships, attraction and such I'd be the first one to say it is hopeless to approach anybody working out at the gym (people riding in elevators are less defended then people at the gym) or for a man, in most circumstances, to lead with telling a young women that she's pretty.
To be receiving unwanted attention like that is a burden, but you also need to recognize that many young today aren't receiving attention, wanted or unwanted, from women or men and have no idea what to do about their situation. If they focus on career they will probably be in a much better situation by 35 just as women around that age will start wishing they were getting more attention. Many of them don't know or don't believe that their situation is going to improve in 15 years or that they can endure it... And nobody is telling them this in a way that they'll listen to or telling them anything about how to communicate about their relationship needs.
From eight months of intensively studying this subject, I'd say that this video contains more information about the kind of communication that leads to relationships that both women and men need to know than anything I've seen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui7h8CTSD_8
Now, if I just had some idea how to "deprogram my son's friend".
In fact I really have had that happen. It's really scary and shitty. Regardless the question was about the internet. And, if I'm understanding you correctly, both mine and your experiences came from organizing in the real world. This article is about just living on the internet and getting death threats for something as little as a tweet about having to put up with men interrupting your workouts
In my second year I was teaching in an autotutorial class where we were working together to help students learn. We were overloaded one of the first nights of the semester and, in front of other people, I criticized a first year grad student (a woman) for what I thought was a poor prioritization of her work. She really "lost her shit" and broke down and cried and I felt really bad about it.
The next day the department head took me aside and explained to me that people find public criticism to be deeply humiliating and that he had learned that lesson himself the hard way. He told me that next time I have a problem like that I should take the person aside and give my criticism privately. I told him, "Yeah, you're right, I feel bad about what happened."
This guy who offended her might have made one of the lamest passes of all time. Despite that, he might have spent weeks building up his courage to do it. He is opening his heart and showing real emotional vulnerability. He's probably got no idea of how to approach somebody in a way that might be effective. He's possibly afraid he's going to grow old and be alone unless he ends up like this guy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorrows_of_Young_Werther
Women believe that love is going to come to them but almost all men face the burden of making an approach and it's a really difficult thing to do that somebody might not have empathy for unless they've experienced it themselves.
It's predictable therefore, that somebody would experience it as deeply wounding that their private failure be turned into a public humiliation that could be witnessed by thousands or more people. It was bad behavior before but the stakes are vastly magnified in the age of social media. All of the time people in relationships or on the edge of relationships say humiliating things about other people on social media and it's a deeply hurtful form of bullying.
The lady involved might well think her actions were justified because "the personal is political" but I'm sure the people who made death threats would agree that their (unjustifiable) actions are justified by the same slogan.
Posting that kind of thing to twitter speaks negatively about her character. Whoever flagged this post was doing her a favor.
If was a potential employer I'd be afraid of her saying something about me, her coworkers, my customers, my vendors, etc. She might do the same thing to a boyfriend or girlfriend.
I can think of one time when a guy said something stupid to a girl at a conference, the kind of "joke" that they turn on the laugh track for on The Big Bang Theory but that isn't funny when you really say it. The girl tweeted about it and started a big controversy -- they both got fired. Your employer doesn't send you to a conference to create a huge amount of trouble.
Also very typical of the HN crowd to automatically build up empathy for the man in this situation and not at all see how fucked up it is that he thought he had the right to interrupt her and THEN GET MAD AT HER when she clearly showed she didn't want it
You yelling at a first year in front of the whole class is completely different from some asshole interrupting her to make a comment and then HIM getting pissed off at her for not reciprocating. She was probably really affected by the fact that he got mad at her and made HER feel like the bad person. She probably took to Twitter to voice that frustration. And yet she avoided doxxing or naming anyone.
Also yelling at a woman in (presumably) a STEM course, where she quite likely already has to face imposter syndrome, is fucked up on multiple levels.
And regardless of all that. How does any of that justify death threats? If you're gonna say that you're not defending those death threats, then why was your point attacking her character even relevant? What were you trying to accomplish?
110+ points