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Comment by turkishrevenge | Hacker News Reader

Just exploit the identity-political zeitgeist that's overtaken universities lately: claim yourself genderqueer, non-binary presenting as male. With the right incantation, the organizers will fold like a house of cards, lest they suffer the blowback to excluding a "righteous" participant.

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It actually turns out that cargo culting the language of social justice works about as well as the sovereign citizen idiots that cargo cult legal jargon -- both of these phenomena exist in a broad, clear social context and it's laughably obvious when someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, like you, attempts an "incantation" with the idea that it's magic words because they don't or can't understand what's actually happening.

> it's laughably obvious when someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, like you

You can tell from a single comment?

I think you overestimate the intelligence and free-thinking ability of bureaucrats and other political-correctness devotees. When a group decrees an arbitrary gender-balancing rule like 50-50, in a field that's 90-10 male, cynical types can absolutely manipulate them to their advantage. In my opinion it's just more proof that the only fair system is a blind meritocracy (or random lottery).

> In my opinion it's just more proof that the only fair system is a blind meritocracy

Blind meritocracies are rarely blind enough, and end up being an old boys club.

I know what's up. That why I made the comment. It's more about what is said than the actual content of the statement itself.

If I did the above, and someone made a stink, I'd hit 'em with "Are you denying my lived experience?" and then reaffirm the validity of my self identity (which is what matters) over what I actually am to observers (which is immaterial and doesn't matter).

I love collecting geek t-shirts. Once I asked for one but they said:

- "Well, but they are for girls only."

- "Do you have something against cross-dressing?"

- "Nope. Sure, take one!"

Hacking the hackers

I hear this is done already with the race thing, I've heard of the "check Hispanic" trick a while back to make it easier to get into collge.

To be fair the American racial categories seem pretty inane to my non-American eyes to begin with.

I understand that there is a lot of cultural baggage to the various categories but I can't count how many times I've been genuinely surprised by Americans identifying as black or Latina/o. The most striking ones I think were Halle Berry and Obama -- it took me a while to process that their recognition was genuinely noteworthy in the US because of their ethnicity. You could have told me Obama were Moroccan or Halle Berry were Indian and I wouldn't have been any more surprised.

For context: I'm German, grew up in the 90s in a city with ~1M residents and am literally colorblind (partially green blind). I'm not sure what part of that makes me unable to properly racially categorize people but I'm not convinced that's a bad thing.

I grew up in Europe and then moved to US. In US, at least in some context (college admissions for example), there is a thing called affirmative action. It seems in order to right a a wrong from the past, or to promote diversity they would sometimes have quotas on how many students from each background to pick. So depending just on race, one could have an easier or much harder way getting accepted. Therefore people would play that card in order to game the system.

I understand that the legislation/culture around race is in part used to correct historical racism (and the present day consequences of it) but I do wonder whether this obsession with racially categorizing oneself is a necessary evil or just evil.

This is insanely problematic. Exploiting marginalized identities is not only rude, but the blow back of pulling a Soul Man is not good for the person pulling the cons future prospects

This is insanely absurd. There is no blow back because the ability to change your mind about gender at the drop of a hat (if inclined) is embraced.

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