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Comment by voidr | Hacker News Reader

> “I am literally sick to my stomach,” wrote group member Carolyn Farino.

It was a stupid comment, how can a stupid comment like that induce sickness in another human being?

Make a joke about typical male stereotypes, nobody bats an eye, make a bad joke involving females, the feminist lynch mob goes into action.

Let's assume in a fashion show a women CEO would have made a similar stupid comment to a male, would we see such a male outrage? No.

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Ok cool so Huang can tell women what they know, and you can tell them how to feel.

She's claiming a physical reaction, not an emotional one. While we can't know if she's feeling nauseous, it's perfectly reasonable to doubt her conclusion that this is caused by Huang's statement.

Do we know better than her how she feels and why?

Whenever you ask a question, I feel physically sick. Please stop asking questions. And don't question me.

> Make a joke about typical male stereotypes, nobody bats an eye

I'm starting to think that maybe this is a problem. Maybe we should stop tolerating male stereotypes.

Edit: typo.

It's not a great thing, sure. But how about a different power imbalance situation. You go to a doctor. The doctor makes a joke "you patients have no idea..." Or similar. The power imbalance there is obvious to anyone. You making a joke about the doctor is different. Power imbalance makes some things less acceptable when its to your advantage. Power imbalance due to gender is generally harder to detect when male.

Totally agree about power imbalance; stereotyping (and belittling in general) someone from a position of more perceived power is of course worse, no doubt about that. But parent's point was along the lines of: women can't take jokes as men do, men are such sports! The most important objection is of course that stereotypes about men don't actually harm men, while stereotypes about women do often harm women, but I also wanted to point out that men being such sports is not necessarily a great thing.

> would we see such a male outrage?

Pretty much the whole Internet consists of male outrage. That and cats.

> I am literally sick to my stomach

> I feel like I was just stabbed in the chest.

Placing this particular incident aside, this kind of hyperbolic speech seems pretty common in comment threads across the internet. It's a lot more dramatic and antagonizing than simply saying "I'm outraged!", and it certainly isn't unique to "the feminist lynch mob".

This observation very well just be confirmation bias on my part.

It was a stupid comment, how can a stupid comment like that induce sickness in another human being?

It's called the sympathetic nervous system[1]. Enough deeply-felt outrage will do.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_nervous_system

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