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Comment by tangled_zans | Hacker News Reader

It's not about disagreement. The poster put "scare quotes" around sexism, implying that the issue does not even exist or is worth discussing.

That's not an "opinion" it's an implicit way of saying that everyone talking about it is kind of dumb for even bringing it up.

EDIT: OH WOW, I HAVE BEEN DOWNVOTED. Which is not something I normally care about since I post quite controversial things anyway. But downvoted by the same people complaining about being "unfairly downvoted by others"? The hypocrisy of you.

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It is about one specific incident where a very privileged woman cost two normal developers their jobs because she took offense from a conversation she was not part of.

Yes, "she cost them their jobs". That's a "valid interpretation" of the story.

I did not downvote you. Maybe I should, but I tend to reserve that for special cases.

That said I and a few others here are downvoted for no apparent reason as well and personally I don't care to much about it except they never care to tell why. That is annoying.

I've noticed that any time a debate of this sort comes up, and someone states a strong view supporting either side, the other side will start downvoting them. That's usually counteracted by their own side upvoting them back up.

It happens to everyone, so it annoys me when I see people complaining about it in every HN thread that has divided opinions on some social justice movement or whatever.

There's no "Please explain why you've chosen to up/down vote" pop up on HN, so no one really owes anyone an explanation for it either. That's just how things are.

Good, now that everything seems to have calmed down just think how it would have felt if instead of a celebrity feminist taking offense at pycon there was a conservative Christian that made reported two developers ultimately causing them to lose their jobs.

Would that be different?

How about we take it a step forward and say "woman caused two developers to be fired"?

Or even better.

"A person at a tech conference caused two developers to be fired".

That way we can judge the situation within its own context, rather than letting our own affiliations or views bias us.

By the way, it's against the guidelines to talk about being downvoted, that will explain further flagging of your post.

Replying here cos I can't reply to your other comment.

Either I have been so bad at communicating my point that it came out as garbled nonsense or you've confused me with someone else.

I am all for people being able to downvote whoever they want without needing to explain themselves. The only reason I mentioned being downvoted at all - by 1 guy, I think - was to point out that the same people complaining that they are being "unfairly downvoted for having controversial opinions" have no qualms about downvoting people with opposing views. Which, in my eyes, is hypocritical.

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