Comment by clint | Hacker News Reader

Comment by clint | Hacker News Reader

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Sounds like someone who has never worked in this industry or talked to any woman working in this industry. These people are not "evil" even though their behaviors are extremely harmful and reprehensible. What is happening here are extremely privileged and ignorant people (generally white, straight men) operating within a context where there are no consequences for bad behavior.

Your reaction here is also a part of the problem—these kinds of behavior have been extensively documented inside and outside this industry for nearly a hundred years now. You deny and belittle these people's lived experiences with no data of your own to back it up besides banal theories and "cartoonish" ideas of how people operate in the world.

Another thing for you to think about before you respond to this with your poorly researched screed is that there are literally no upsides to Susan for reporting this stuff. All the data we have show that women who report these kinds of behavior get blacklisted from the industry, shunned by their peers, and perhaps face legal action. This doesn't even count the tidal wave of harassment, death threats and worse that comes along with exposing men in power for doing bad things (depression, suicide, paranoia, etc). Think about how awful your own situation would need to be to open yourself up to that sort of thing. No one does this lightly and without cause, and yes this stuff happens all the time and even worse.

Another good read to improve your ignorance of the matter: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/technology/uber-workplace...

>All the data we have show that women who report these kinds of behavior get blacklisted from the industry, shunned by their peers, and perhaps face legal action.

Things are far, far better for people who speak out in the contemporary tech industry as opposed to fields like banking, finance, big law, big pharma, and oil. Being blacklisted from a company in one of those industries is a death sentence for your career. That simply isn't true for tech (as of right now). The deeply entrenched connections that exist in the aforementioned industries between competing firms and also with the government simply aren't there in tech.

I personally know three women who have been unfairly blacklisted in some of those industries, and it's not right or fair for you to use that as a talking point here, because the consequences are so much more severe when you are unfairly blamed in those cases.

Massive support networks exist for women in tech, and the powerful people in tech don't have the influence necessary to completely bury things like this under the rug. You can still stand up to a company like Uber or Airbnb without them crushing you and everyone who supports you underfoot.

>these kinds of behavior have been extensively documented inside and outside this industry for nearly a hundred years now

Holy crap computers have been around for 100 years?

> (generally white, straight men)

Citation needed. Also, think about this. What other sort of adjective used to describe people or sexual orientation would be acceptable to describe people fitting a bad image? If you said the same thing about hispanic bisexual women, would that be socially acceptable?

> Holy crap computers have been around for 100 years?

I'm guessing you weren't able to read the "and outside" part of the sentence you glibly quoted. If anything, claiming that it's less than 100 years is the major failure of that statement.

> If you said the same thing about hispanic bisexual women, would that be socially acceptable?

Can you name an environment where hispanic bisexual women are extremely privileged?

> I'm guessing you weren't able to read the "and outside"

I guess then it's just a rhetorical flourish for no added benefit? 100 years ago there was no inside or outside of the industry - what's the point of that statement?

when Hispanic bisexual women take over this world and start abusing their privilege like the cishetero patriarchy then we will criticize them. Until then, please sit down.

> If you said the same thing about hispanic bisexual women, would that be socially acceptable?

Your PC censorship won't work on this forum. It doesn't matter if it's "socially acceptable" as long as it's true. It's true that it's white, straight men that are generally privileged and ignorant here, and (speaking as a non-white straight man) it's relevant, because the way you're ignorant about things is not having to care about them. I'm much more aware of how my race affects how I interact with the world than about how my gender does.

> because the way you're ignorant about things is not having to care about them.

Bear in mind this discussion is all about people leaping to action on the unsubstantiated claims of one person on their personal blog.

Exactly. As a non-white person, you don't have to care about calling other groups racist, privileged or ignorant. And if somebody is a woman, you don't have to care about calling other people sexist.

And censorship is a strong word. If you want free speech and no censorship, all opinions should be welcomed, and you should not be able to shut down arguments by using identity politics and privilege.

For instance, if you were a male, would your unsubstantiated blog post have had similar impact? That is privilege in a nutshell, that who you are determines how much attention and belief you get.

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