Ask HN: Has political correctness gone too far?

It is the only way to survive. If you say the wrong thing, even if you aren't attacking anyone, you could have your career or life ruined. Just look at the ex-Mozilla CEO for a good example of this. He donated a small amount of money in a cause he believe in, but because it didn't go along with the community narrative, he was bullied online until he was forced to resign.

If it had been the reverse and he donated to a pro gay marriage fund and the company was extremely religious, the same community would be on the side of the CEO. This is what tells you it's all about politics and has nothing to do with what people tell you (freedom, etc).

I just don't understand why we can't just live and let live.

In the end, it means that people like me that ordinarily just want to live and let live now have to resort to under-handed tactics (like getting people fired and ruining the lives of people) to make the world right.

1) There is a sexism problem in tech. I have seen it first hand.

2) It's not present in all companies all of the time, and gender balance is not evidence, in and of itself, of the problem existing in a given workforce.

3) Sexism is not unique to the tech industry. My wife is a qualified helicopter pilot, and was told (in 2008!) "sure, send in your resume, but I should warn you that we run an unofficial no-chicks policy" by one outfit she applied to as a junior pilot.

4) The issues about which you're complaining - bullying, harassment, restraint of trade etc. - are not in any way related to either sexism or the tech industry. It's about power. Groups who have in the past been marginalised and oppressed are now becoming powerful, and are abusing that power in exactly the same way as their erstwhile oppressors. It's seen as okay by them and their supporters, because it's targeted at 'bad people'. I used to work for a University nearly two decades ago, and saw the same pattern play out there in fields unrelated to tech. It's just taken a while to get rolling in our industry.

As Rand once said: "every infringement of human rights has begun with the suppression of a given right's least attractive practitioners". Mencius Moldbug is the example who springs to mind here.

I would suggest actually asking (not talking) with minorities in tech about how diverse/tolerant the tech industry appears to them. Part of being in a privileged group is blindness to the experiences of those outside the group, so without conversation, we live in an echo chamber.

Discrimination is rarely an intentional thing, but caused by our unexamined attitudes and beliefs. I don't consider myself racist at all, but my half-black fiance routinely points out blind spots I'd never noticed.

> I find it offensive that there are claims of sexism in OSS and tech.

This statement sort of assumes the claims are groundless. But until you ask outsiders for their experiences, how can you be sure? What basis do you use that you are so sure you're right?

The whole political correctness thing and the social justice warriors who are destroying everything decent in the world -- are simply the fruits on the neo-marxists of the Frankfurt School.

Critical Theory.

Look it up. And while you're at it, look up The Frankfurt School.

It was always their plan to destroy capitalist society through the simple strategy of complaining about shit without offering any solutions - and creating class warfare on every possible front.

So the social justice warriors who play the oppression olympics are generating classes of oppressors and oppressed out of thin air.

It is after all, impossible to wage class warfare without distinct classes. One must always be the oppressor. Another must be the oppressed.

It's brilliant.

Evil.

But brilliant.

It's the new witch hunt. The new Spanish Inquisition. The new McCarthyism. Tail-gunner Joe was an amateur.

Nobody expects the PC Inquisition!

However, the parallel you seem to be trying to make between that and the reality (that, in your opinion, there is no sexism problem in tech/OSS) is equally wrong and probably much more destructive. I hope you continue to think about that opinion, listen to those who it hurts when you can, and change your mind eventually.

It's fine if you don't want to spend your career actively trying to solve this particular problem; there are many other important problems to work on. However, there's a big difference between "this isn't what I want to spend my time fixing" and refusing to acknowledge that the problem exists, even when there are plenty of people providing mountains of evidence to the contrary. And at a minimum, it's worth taking the time to learn how to not further propagate the problem yourself.

"we were already diverse by design decades ago"? No, that one is trivial to refute; go look at the numbers.

Codes of conduct are a more formal way of saying "we're no longer willing to put up with awful and abusive people just because they write good code". And quite a few people have held that up as good policy in other contexts as well, such as hiring.

Claiming that you "can't give an opinion, or even make a mistake" is hyperbole. Sure, there are some topics you might want to be careful about; as a general rule, it's a good idea to not pretend you're an expert in a topic you know very little about, or you might embarrass yourself. There are also various places you can go to ask introductory questions and learn, on topics you're genuinely curious about. As for mistakes, it depends on the type of mistake; a genuine mistake can often be handled with a genuine apology, while a "mistake" of the form "I didn't mean to reveal that I'm a terrible person" is unlikely to be swept under the rug. But if your complaint is that you want somewhere you can be sexist or discriminatory without repercussion, find another planet please.

No one "decides to flagkill". It's a cumulative effect of individual user flags. When this happens to an active discussion, we typically unkill the post so the discussion can continue, but don't otherwise override the flags. We did that earlier with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9738526, but not https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9741640 (hadn't seen that one). Otherwise, no moderator touched those posts.

You can't just repost something n+1 times when it has been flagkilled n times. If we allowed that, there would hardly be much point to flagging. So we're going to demote the current post as a duplicate, but not kill it (again so discussion can continue).

Be polite. Be nice. Be respectful. It would make the world a better place. That means thinking about whether something you are saying or doing is making other people uncomfortable, and then not doing it.

I think it's John Rawls who suggested thinking about the world you want to be born into if you had no idea which gender or ethnic group or sexuality or body type you would be born as. It's a sad truth that I would not want to be born as a female with an interest in programming, and that makes me think there's a sexism problem in programming.

Sure, there are baying mobs going around social networks who will attack just about anybody for anything. But there are also good people rightly calling people out for saying things that are totally unacceptable given their position.

duncan_bayne and JoshTriplett are right to point out that there's been a hell of a lot of sexism around, and I think we can all agree it's hugely important we fix that and move on as an industry. On the flipside, with any group arguing any issue, you always get this moderate-fanatic spectrum, and people pushing for political correctness aren't any different. It's not a PC thing, or a SJW thing, it's a human thing. Happens to everyone. And that's what anon3_, our OP, is talking about - the loudest people pushing this stuff tend to (1) have a brittle, one-dimensional view of their subject matter, and (2) outshout all the other people who are doing their damndest to combine staunch support with tact and diplomacy, and both together create this oppressive atmosphere that OP's talking about. Outrage culture. I don't mean to have a go at them, much of the time it's because they've been on the receiving end of some really traumatic prejudice, and anyone in their shoes would find themselves reacting the same way - but there's just no getting away from the fact that it damages their ability to communicate these issues with skill.

That's the thing - both issues, resolving topics as important as institutionalised sexism, and the counterproductiveness of those who shout about it the loudest - they're both true at once, and both important. I think the question here isn't so much "how much should we dumb down any complex/subtle opinions we might have so as not to inflame the SJWs?", but rather "How do we best reconcile these topics?" The Short Short Short answer is, probably, listen, and do your best to understand everyone, even if you disagree with them.

There might or might not be a reasonable discussion to be had on this subject. The place for that is almost certainly not HN.