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Comment by dajohnson89 | Hacker News Reader

She had me until the very end, with the anecdote about the guy apologizing for swearing in front of her.

I would apologize if I said "fuck" near my country's president, or even the president of my small-ish company. Both of whom are male. It's a sign of respect. In the context of women, I see it in a similar light to holding the door open for a lady. It isn't me assuming she's too weak to open a door, it's just a common courtesy.

I'm genuinely sorry that the author was offended by the guy apologizing for saying "fuck" near her. I can't speak for him, and perhaps he was a total douchebag. But perhaps he was aware that on average men can be more crude than women, and in a professional (male-dominated, numerically speaking!) setting like that one, it's prudent to avoid language that could make people feel uncomfortable.

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You're missing this important point:

> His effort to be courteous made me feel that I was different, the odd one out, the one we must be careful around and treat like a fragile flower.

We should respect all our colleagues equally regardless of the type of sexual organs they happen to be equipped with (and regardless of other irrelevant characteristics). Singling out one group over others for additional "respect" is what makes them feel different and out of place.

In the setting of this anecdote her role was not that of a "lady", but that of an "engineer".

And you missed the point of the GP poster. The GP would have apologized for this to anyone he didn't know well. Why would it be GP's fault for "making" someone feel "out of place" by treating them with a certain respect that has nothing to do with any personal characteristics? Her role wasn't "lady" or "engineer", it was "person I don't an F-bomb-level rapport with."

At least that's the main point of GP's post. What the guy in the story was thinking is debatable I guess, but I don't see much point since we can't know.

My interpretation of the GP's comment was that he believes the man in the article was simply treating the author with the same common courtesy he treats all women with. My parents' generation used to call this "being a gentleman".

Speaking of my parents, my mother brought me up to always be a gentleman around ladies, which included things like not using bad language. This was quickly drilled out of me when I entered the real world.

Dave Chappelle has an amusing stand-up routine about this subject called "Chivalry is dead, and women killed it"

GP here. The correct interpretation of my comment is that it was complete bullshit, judging by the downvotes it received. Hope that clears everything up.

He treats all women with a common courtesy... and all men with that same courtesy.

Did you misread the bit about "holding the door open for a lady"? Hint: the reason he does so is not because of her gender, has nothing to do with "being a gentleman" or anything else your parents taught you that you're dragging into this thread before anyone else did. The reason I know is because he calls it a "common courtesy" in a "similar light" to his position on being respectful with your language regardless of the gender of your listeners, and disavows one sexist justification for holding the door for women specifically. He probably brought up the door thing because some people have the idea that women are offended by having a man hold a door for them, precisely because it used to be chivalrous. And a counter-meme is that few real women are like that, so who knows, but this swearing anecdote seems a point in favor of the first idea. Did you see that he used the word "lady" and your chivalry detectors flared up and refuse to take anything else he says at face value? Was the comment edited after your reply? I was there around that time and it seems unlikely.

Since I had to dig a bit to justify it above, I can understand how you've misinterpreted it. The comment may have been sloppily written, or has a certain subtle sense of humor/sarcasm/analogy, or maybe even trolling by appearing sexist but being technically not.. but if you read it carefully and maybe a bit charitably I really believe it means pretty much the opposite of what you thought.

You probably still hold back on some "bad language" to men and women you don't know well, or you wouldn't call it "bad language." That was the main point.

I wasn't trying to attack the OP. I was offering my interpretation of his comment along with the opinion that maybe being chivalrous doesn't make him a bad person. It might just be that he was brought up to believe that it's socially unacceptable not to be chivalrous.

Why can't she be treated as both simultaneously? Why does treatment as an "engineer" require the abolition of her "lady" role? Are the two roles not compatible?

I personally thing it is more sexist to try and deny gender differences than simply recognise them and deal with people respectfully. I find the implication that the only way to not be sexist is to treat everyone as gender neutral disturbing.

Yes. We are different and there is nothing wrong with that. Hell, we might even have different skill-sets, meaning that for a given task, a certain sex might be a better choice than another... still not a problem.

You are going to have to make an argument on what the gender difference is that would result in it being considered appropriate to cuss in front of males but inappropriate in front of females.

Why is it generally okay to swear in front of men but generally not okay to swear in front of women? That's a pretty sexist, and condescending, point of view.

Sure, there are gender differences. But I don't think "genetic vulnerability to profanity" is one of them.

This feminist wiki says, "Any form of 'fuck' that assumes penetration is a bad thing for the receptive partner" is misogynist[1]. So I guess something like "Yeah, they really fucked us over on that one." could have been what he said, and it would be misogynistic and thus makes sense to be something that shouldn't be said around women especially. The next step is to eliminate saying it around men too, because misogyny hurts us all.

Yes, I'm being half-sarcastic here. It seems like if you want to question this definition of misogyny, you have to concede that every such thing, like casual uses of the terms "trigger" and "microagression", is suspect. Why is "fuck" so acceptable to say around women that they feel left out when you try to abstain, but saying "forking" and "dongle" was a mini sexual assault that one time?

[1] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Guide_for_foul-mouthed_fe...

That seems like a bit of a strawman and overgeneralization. I personally think offense over "fuck", "fork", or "dongle" is absurd (beyond typical professionalism/politeness standards), but this is one branch of feminism finding "fuck" offensive, and in the "dongle" incident, one single woman who found it offensive at the time. Obviously not all women find these things offensive. Not all people (women or otherwise) use or advocate for the modern-tumblr definitions of "microaggression" or "trigger", either.

You're acting like the article you linked is some sort of rulebook all women in technology abide by.

I'm surprised my comment was actually somewhat popular, so it may well have been interpreted differently than I meant. I was intending to sarcastically take the position that one feminist website is a rulebook for everyone, because that's how people seriously act all the time. The woman in the dongle fiasco believed that because she was offended, everyone should be, and the conference organizers apparently agreed. She had plenty of supporters -- was it really just "one single woman"? Maybe it's a bad example, because as the situation evolved she was being attacked (and in response, supported) more as a woman than as a professional maintaining certain standards. But I do believe a substantial chunk supported her position itself, a complaint primarily about sexism.

On the other hand, the OP herself is in the gray (for now at least) for saying dick jokes are fine and the only sexism there is the lack of vulva jokes.[1]

The fact that there is no rulebook was exactly my point. For every person wanting to analyze whether your anatomical/sexual reference is offensive to someone, there is someone else feeling singled out that you would take that care before saying it in front of them. I don't want to throw up my hands and give up, just point out that people act like the answers are easy but it's actually very complex. There's little consensus on proper behavior on these small scales, and both sides have tribal and exclusionary behaviors.

Behavior of today's college students, in the US at least, suggests the Tumblr generation is growing and therefore a sizable contingent of people really will increasingly apply these standards to everyone else.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10760819 (you have to go up to parent to see the grayness, and I'm assuming it's the OP because she claimed so in another comment and has a sufficiently-aged account with the same name as the website)

In my experience, with my friends, male friends are much more likely to swear than female. So it's reasonable to assume they would also be more accepting of other people swearing, and generalize this assumption to other people.

That's fair; I can see why you'd have that viewpoint, in that case. In my own experience, my male and female friends all swear with about equal frequency. I've never noticed a trend like that myself. It might be area- and culture-dependent to some degree, maybe? I live on the US east coast.

Yes, very likely. Or language-dependent, as well - in English, "fuck" can very conveniently be placed almost everywhere, and has (IMO) lost a lot of its charge... In Sloveinan, many swear-words carry much stronger emphasis.

You remind me of a time when one of my colleagues made a somewhat ribald comment, and my other colleague - the only woman in the room (whom, by the way, we treated in the way the author would have approved: as one of us) - reminded him that there was a lady present.

I still keep in touch with her, so I'll be sure to pass on the message that she's both sexist and condescending.

I can't really respond to this without knowing the actual content of the comment, and the context.

But if it was literally him saying something like "what the fuck" or whatever, then yes, I think she was not being reasonable. If she were to say "I don't like that kind of language", that's fine, but to suggest ladies don't like that kind of language is a big overgeneralization on her part.

I'm guessing it was a different kind of comment, though, given "ribald". In which case it's not just an issue of profanity anymore, and so her reaction may have been perfectly justified.

I think it was a sexual comment, or it may have been a gesture. It was a long time ago now, so I can't really remember.

As far as I'm concerned, her reaction was justified whatever the context. If she'd had a different reaction, that would have been fine too. It's not reasonable to tell someone that they aren't entitled to a reaction.

> That's a pretty sexist, and condescending, point of view.

Have you lived in the South before? Men are raised that it's a sign of respect to be on their best behaviors around ladies. Shouldn't this count as cultural diversity and be respected?

No, because it is cis-gendered, heteronormative white culture. They don't get a seat at the table to discuss grievances and microaggressions. They're all descendants of brutish, evil plantation slave-owners who should pay for the crimes of people gone to worm-food before they were so much as a twinkle in their father's eye.

:-)

I realize I need some neologisms.

Apparently the two roles aren't perceived as compatible by whoever felt the need to apologize to a fellow engineer for saying something that no engineer would be upset to hear, or for that matter at all unlikely to say. If he has to choose, as apparently he does, between thinking of her as an engineer and thinking of her as a lady, then I'd suggest that the role she's earned should trump the one to which she was born.

I don't see that "likes to swear or have people swear nearby" is an essential or generally accepted component of the role of "engineer".

Your statement is actually extremely sexist, I'm not sure if you realise that. "The role she's earned should trump the one to which she was born" - so being a "lady" is somehow an "inferior role" that can be trumped by the superior, earned role of "being an engineer"?

It really doesn't seem that hard to me. A person can be all sorts of genders and various fluid things in between male and female, and you accept that and treat them as such - with respect for all those roles, without assuming one to be superior to the other. On top of that, they might take on a bunch of other roles. Those roles don't obliterate the nature of who they are. "I'm no longer a woman, I'm now an engineer" implies that the two roles are exclusionary, that one is superior, to the other, etc.

How about: "I'm a woman and I'm an engineer. They're both part of my identity."

Caveat: I live in the UK. We don't have quite the levels of rampant sexism y'all seem to have in the states (or at least I haven't observed it). Or racism, for that matter. Seems a bit more civilised over here, based on the stories I read about the US. People are people. They're black, white, rainbow-striped, whatever. They're people and people are awesome and worthy of all the love in the universe, whatever their gender, skin colour, profession, etc.

> so being a "lady" is somehow an "inferior role" that can be trumped by the superior, earned role of "being an engineer"?

Not at all. As an accurate reading of my earlier comment would make obvious, I'm well aware they are not incompatible in the slightest. But for someone who doesn't understand that, and has therefore to choose one or the other as a basis for dealing with another person, "engineer" would seem to be preferable, and I've yet to run across the engineer, in a room full of engineers, to whom an apology for swearing is necessary.

The remainder of your exceptionalism I'll let pass without comment, save to note that of course nothing says "civilized" like days of unsuppressed looting and rioting in the capital city. Yes, you're clearly doing something right there.

> it's prudent to avoid language that could make people feel uncomfortable.

The weird thing is not that he apologized (that's reasonable), the weird thing is that he apologized /to her/ (and not to the group as a whole).

What if the reason she was "singled out" was actually that she was the only person the swearer didn't know well enough to feel OK about swearing around? Or was the only one he considered to be in earshot? Or she was just the closest and he felt he should make some gesture because he regretted it, but it wasn't bad enough to personally apologize to every last person?

I guess the author's impression trumps ours (and only the swearer's honest account of his thoughts could trump hers), but she didn't really address those, so I have some doubts on whether it's as clear-cut as you say.

Nope. There were many people around, and it was clear that he didn’t know all of them. There were people he didn't know just as close as I was. He apologized only to me, nobody else.

Thanks for the clarification. If you don't mind sharing more and if you remember, what was the exact usage of the word? It seems like some of them could be construed as sexist, as I referred to in another comment. So maybe that was why he was apologizing. I assume you didn't think it was sexist (or you would have said so), but maybe he was concerned it could be interpreted that way.

(If that's the case, he shouldn't have said it regardless of who was around, but once he said it, apologizing with some amount of sincerity would be better than not apologizing.)

It's been years but I think it was just exclamation. Like "oh, fuck!".

I didn't get the impression that she was offended by the guy who apologized for saying "fuck" near her. I think it just made her feel more self-conscious.

You totally missed the point on this part. She wasn't actually offended, it was the one thing that made her feel different from the rest, which was the closest thing to feeling sexism. Had she been offended, she would have not written this article imo.

My company has a culture in which we all swear like pirates. This makes this whole question moot. Even the softly spoken polite types end up sounding like they were raised in the gutter by the end of week two.

Additionally, swearing is a social signal that typically bonds people, as it's a "we can say these things together" type affair.

We swear in front of and with clients (not all - there are some where we know it would be a lead balloon). We talk like human fucking beings. Folks tend to find this refreshing, and it results in a more relaxed atmosphere, and more relaxed interpersonal and client relationships.

Franky, if someone is offended by my language, then I see that as strictly their problem, and I won't apologise for it.

Would you seriously hold a door open for a woman, but not a man? That's ... weird.

Some dudes get really testy about having doors opened for them (which is all the more reason to do it).

Indeed; I always slam the door on them as they approach, as a sign of respect.

> I would apologize if I said "fuck" near my country's president

I'd be pretty pleased if I managed to hold down a conversation with any of our political 'leaders' that didn't involve a good many expletives.

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