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Comment by patcheudor | Hacker News Reader

My daughter has been going with me to DEF CON since she was eleven. She's 20 now and this year at DEF CON while she was hanging out at a party with our pen-test team an individual walked up and asked: "how much for the girl." I'm honestly very glad I wasn't there to hear that. This whole behavior is completely confusing. On what planet is that sort of behavior, even when inebriated even remotely acceptable? It's degrading, unprofessional, and frankly well beyond just being sexist. Maybe the guy just wanted to be punched in the face?

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It is hard to fathom the grotesque nature of people. It used to be one could count on a certain amount of civility and comportment. Modern society has lost some of its inhibitions and people in general have become old adolescents where their most puerile and despicable behavior is reinforced in popular media as well as niche interest providers.

Yes, I defended photography on another part of this thread, as I think it's important to understand its place in society, but that was not an excuse for grovelers and oglers.

It's a sad statement on modern society we have descended so low. At least previously we (as a society) put on a mask of modicum, that mask has vanished greatly. Now, we don't care much about hiding our inhibitions our most base instincts.

Shaming people doesn't hurt (the cause), but it does not help either. I think there is something bigger at play. Moral compass is something so-called conservatives like to toss around, but I do think we have failed the younger generations in ensuring they have a robust understanding of morality --yes, one, while shifting, we should have some basic understanding of injury, remorse and to quote a long dead chief counsel for the army "decency".

I would argue that we as a society have become much more civil and the assholes stick out more as a consequence of that.

30 years ago nobody complained about stuff like this because a)no woman at these events and b)it was absolutely acceptable. And that's without the honey/darling/grope your coworkes time old media tells me about (was that real by the way? I'm from Europe and to young to have had any contact with that )

>It is hard to fathom the grotesque nature of people. It used to be one could count on a certain amount of civility and comportment.

When? Every generation has assholes. Name me a time when people were more civil than now.

Look at the gutter comments on this post to find out how 'unprofessional' it is. The problem is that men who act disgusting are present at all levels of the social hierarchy, men in general are concentrated at the top, and crucially, other men don't call out these gross dudes when they see it. There are more men who feel threatened by gender politics enough that they either dissimulate the problem away, protect their shitty colleagues, or rationalize it away than men who actively stand in solidarity with women.

Which is astounding to me.

This guy at a minimum deserved a slap in the face and a firm command to get lost, and you don't have to be a third-wave feminist to think that. A lot people are of the mind that so-called "gender politics" solves fewer problems than it creates, and a "with us or against us" attitude doesn't help, either.

What sort of problems?

Getting a guy fired for privately telling a "dongle" joke to his male co-worker while at a conference for example. And then costing the woman who snitched on them and told the internet her own job. (true story)

This kind of BS over the top reactions, among other things.

This is another thing that lands on these threads, like clockwork: one time, a woman freaked out over an overheard joke, complained publicly on Twitter, ended up getting someone fired, and was then fired herself. "And you are lynching the negroes."

That this has nothing whatsoever to do with the comment thread we're on about someone's daughter being called a prostitute at DEFCON is unimportant; what's important is to deploy as many countermeasures as possible to prevent sincere conversation about harassment.

OP specifically asked for examples though.

The same as with any other identity politics, really. It makes it really hard to get shit done policy wise, because when you view everything through the lense of identity politics, every disagreement becomes an attack on you personally even if it is just an honest difference of opinion. While some things should be polarizing, probably, identity politics tends to make things needlessly polarizing sometimes, I've found. It is a useful tool definitely, but when it's the only way you approach policy and political action, it often makes you feel really good and validated even while you're failing to achieve a lot of your goals.

Going into it any further than this is going to require more specific examples, which I'm not willing to do since it will derail the hell out of this thread. Sorry.

You derailed a few paragraphs ago.

Well, it's relatively easy to rile up identity politics on the web and place a collective responsibility with a reductionist solution like "calling out" as if it is absolute, more so than following these principles oneself.

For what it's worth, though it is convenient to analyze issues under grand models of identity and class warfare (and I've noticed your commenting patterns before as being quite reminiscent to that of a troll, one with far-left tendencies), people ultimately act out of varied individual motives. From my experience "calling people out" thus has a mixed efficacy.

Maybe the guy just wanted to be punched in the face?

Because jokes justify violence?

Touch the fire and get burned. Imply someones daughter is a prostitute to them and I think a violent reaction might not be that uncommon.

Well some people use that logic to justify killing cartoonists who depict Mohammed.

You can use modus ponens to justify all kinds of weird shit. What's your point?

My point is that being offended isn't a valid reason to use violence against someone. If a stranger says something non-threatening and you react by hitting him, you're a danger to the public and should possibly be arrested.

"How much for the girl" is predatory behavior and a threat, actually, and anyway I don't agree with your premise.

Fighting Words: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fighting_words

To a3voices:

Violence occurs along a spectrum. Punching != trying to kill, in all cases.

Well in some cases it could be considered a felony, and you could go to prison for years, not to mention possible hospital bills and grief you caused the person you struck.

Not if I was on the jury.

Going to prison for assault over something that somebody said (maybe they are on medication or have some sort of illness/generally not around people) is also pretty un-cool.

You just tell them not to do that again. 'I would have' stories on the internet are pretty lame too.

Readers: you'll find a variant of this exact comment in a lot of threads about harassment on HN, for what it's worth. Someone says "I'm glad I wasn't there to witness <loved one> being harassed" and, like clockwork, this response.

I'm pretty sure it's in some MRA troll playbook somewhere.

Or, you know, people genuiunly believing that just because stress or harm was caused to your <loved one >, it still doesn't justify violence.

I'm not sure by what logic the "if I was there to witness my <loved one > being harassed I've have beaten them up" is supposed to be beyond critique...

Readers: look at this train wreck of a thread and notice how effective the tactic was.

Notice how little the subthread has to do not only with the original story --- it's disconnection to the story is bad enough --- but to the actual comment it responds to, which doesn't even mention violence.

Like I said: I'm sincerely suspect this is in an actual playbook of MRA trolling techniques.

If they really need a playbook... an allegation I don't doubt for an instant... that's really kind of pathetic don't you think? :P

Pathetic is not the word I would use.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: as the parent of two very nerdy teenagers, one girl and one boy, I have a lot of worries here. But I'm far less worried that the girl is going to experience bullshit like the woman in this story, and way, way, way, way, way, way, way more worried that somehow I'm going to lose track of the boy when he goes off to college and he's going to somehow turn into one of these MRA trolls. That's the terrifying thought.

(He's awesome, though, so the fear is mostly irrational.)

>Readers: look at this train wreck of a thread and notice how effective the tactic was. Notice how little the subthread has to do not only with the original story --- it's disconnection to the story is bad enough --- but to the actual comment it responds to, which doesn't even mention violence.

Are you kidding me? First of all ""I'm glad I wasn't there to witness <loved one> being harassed" implies violence clearly ("or who knows what I've done" etc). I

Second, this very subtread began with the suggestion of punching the "the guy in the face", followed by the question whether "jokes justify violence".

Then there's the appalling call to the "Readers" -- as if to say: hey, fellow HNs, come see these wild specimens of unpopular opinion. Let's bully them/downvote them all together. That, along with name-calling ("trolls", "MRA", etc).

Because of course, somebody can't call against violence to a person who did such a thing unless he's an MRA, right? I mean, it's logically impossible that someone can be against such kind of violent responses in general, even if the offender had insulted another male or a gay, or even if the offender was a woman, right?

>Like I said: I'm sincerely suspect this is in an actual playbook of MRA trolling techniques.

And like I often say: people who see trolling in candid opinions they don't like are either using the accusation dishonestly to shut people up, or live in an echo chamber.

"Clearly implies". See how easy it is to keep this thread going? Once again: note that the story we're commenting on has nothing to do with violence, nor does the comment that sparked off this subthread about violence.

Stop to think for a second, readers, how carefully you'd have to write a comment to inoculate it from this kind of trolling. That too is part of the point.

>Once again: note that the story we're commenting on has nothing to do with violence, nor does the comment that sparked off this subthread about violence.

Sure. Probably I imagined the "Maybe the guy just wanted to be punched in the face?" quote, and the response to that discussing violence, all present before I added my comment on the subject lower in the thread.

Readers, see how you can use your high status on HN, and the fact that people won't particularly check the whole thread, to marginalize and accuse people you don't like of trolling. All the while speaking from a pedestal, with call-outs to "readers" and such shenanigans.

And if they dare respond to set things straight (at least from their perspective), that's more proof that they are indeed trolls.

I stop here, can't win this game, and am 40-something, so I'm not interested in games in the first place.

You're fixating on something which wasn't the core thrust of the thread, and using it as a point to derail the conversation. The original post was essentially about his daughter having a shitty experience. I don't think there's a playbook, but it is odd that people get so kneejerk defensive about these kind of things they have to lash out with whatever tiny criticism they can muster, regardless of it actually being relevant to the topic being discussed.

>You're fixating on something which wasn't the core thrust of the thread

Why call it "fixating", as opposed to merely opting to comment on a raised issue that I find more interesting than the "idiot insults girl at convention"?

Doesn't commenting on only part of the starting thread (or even bringing up a new point, related to the discussion but not explicitly present) happen naturally like all the time on HN? Because that's how conversations go? E.g. "Go 1.5 released -> Still no Generics -> Generics are not needed ->", that can go all the way to subthreads discussing Oberon, Java, the blub paradox, etc.

Besides, the main reason I added a few more comments was because I was called out for commenting on the violence part -- the rest of my comments were meta, belaboring the obvious, that the issue had already been raised.

Sorry, but: 1. Doesn't sound like a joke, note even close. 2. If it happened to my daughter and I was there to witness, I'd have to control myself not to punch the asshole in the face too. Especially if he was one of those dork-looking too-coward-to-man-up-and-be-normal nerds. Oh, and that was a joke, wasn't it obvious?

"Doesn't sound like a joke, note even close."

It sounds very much like a very specific joke.

Blues Brothers has a scene where Belushi is being obnoxious and asks the father in family of diners at a neighboring table "How much for the little girl? How much for the women?"

Of course, the joke there is precisely that it's so outrageous and unacceptable.

Of course those are two different things.

What two things are different?

To sound like a joke, as in everyone will find it funny and immediately know it is a joke, and to sound like one specific obscure line that is a joke in some film, and that people don't immediately get. They both sound like a joke, but here "like a joke" means two different things.

Ah. I think you're drawing a reasonable distinction.

Though I certainly wouldn't say everyone (or even most) need to find it funny to "sound like a joke" in the sense you meant. Surely, there are bad jokes that sound like bad jokes. I think it's probably correct to say that most should "immediately know it is a joke".

All of that said, whether that's likely to be the case in this instance depends on a lot of context that wasn't specified.

>Especially if he was one of those dork-looking too-coward-to-man-up-and-be-normal nerds.

So if that guy was non-dork normal looking (read: able to defend himself) you wouldn't punch him in the face? Everyone likes to beat up imaginary nerds, but what if it was the Charles Atlas kick-sand-in-the-face kind of guy, huh?

no, I was just making a point, as in saying something stupid and then just using the cop-out that it was a joke, like the first commenter did. I would defend my daughter no matter the size of the asshole, like most parents would.

Easy, just punch him in the face, then say it was just a joke. Fair is fair, right?

Implying that the presence of a woman at a tech conference is unexpected then insinuating they are cheap sexual property while addressing them in the third person is at the very fucking essence of violence. Jokes don't justify violence, oppression does.

Idk about a punch to the face specifically (that sounds likely to cause injury) but a small pain inflicted as retaliation for being wronged does not really seem all that terrible to me?

Especially if there is a social convention for how it is to work.

Of course, the amount of pain would have to be significantly less of an offense than what it is prompting it.

But when pain is sufficiently small, I think the meaning behind the pain is more important than the actual pain.

>Especially if there is a social convention for how it is to work.

So, like lynching blacks back in the day?

Or beating your kids?

"Social convention" or not who said violence is justified in a non-violent setting?

It's like you read the Wikipedia article on "tu quoque" and decided to use it as a playbook to run on this thread.

Or as if I am a pacifist -- also having written frequently here against all kinds of violent retribution, including the death penalty.

Imagine that.

OMG how noble of you

The social convention I was thinking of would be more a formalization of how things would work when there is a striking.

Not as a "who is it ok to strike".

So, kind of like challenging someone to a duel, instead of someone trying to harm someone, they would only be trying to inflict relatively small, and short-lived pain.

Something like , one announces that one intends to strike the other person, allowing them the chance to object, explains that if they cannot agree on whether they may strike the person, that they will not object to being struck in response with a proportional amount, adjusted for different levels of pain tolerance, and will not strike further in response to being struck in response. Then if the person does not object, for example, then they strike once (with not excessive force), and wait to allow the other person to strike them (with proportional force) if they so choose.

There is not currently any social convention like this, but provided that the force used and amount of pain are small enough, and not excessively frequent, and people respond to objections reasonably, it doesn't seem like it would be that bad if there was?

Pushing my fingernail against my other finger causes pain, but it does not cause suffering. When pains are small enough, I think the meaning/interpretation of the pain is more significant than the pain, so the actual pain is mostly irrelevant, except in that it stands for what it does.

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