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Comment by dismantlethesun | Hacker News Reader

Are you a white coal miner dying of black lung?

I think the issue here is simple. Some women make complaints about events in their daily lives, and connect it to a wider conflict/issue about the rights and status of women. Let's call these women group A.

On the other hand, it seems rare for men to complain in the same way.

I've seen men complaining about group A merely having discussions.

I've seen men complaining about the treatment of men whom they are not connected to (e.g. coal miners, kindergarden teachers, nurses).

However, I rarely see personal gripes.

I'd invite you to actually make a personal gripe, because it will be more topical than dragging up an age-old trope.

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You're enthusiastically providing a case study of my original comment. The reason you rarely see personal gripes of black lung or factory layoffs or opioid overdoses or IED injuries or the myriad of other ills plaguing humanity, is because you live in an upper class bubble.

Well, considering that some of my close family and many of my friends are military or former military---I'd hardly say that I'm living in an upper-class bubble with no idea about the gripes that military folk can have.

That said, I think I should clarify my comment was about online discussion. In real life, there's no shortage of people griping from all walks of life, but online (or perhaps, I should say on the tech circuit online) most of the articles, blogs, and comments don't seem, representative of men's' personal struggles, but rather complaints about women discussing their lives, or complaints that some sub-fraction of men whom they can't claim membership with is having issues.

I believe there is at least a partial influence from a culture of "men don't talk about their problems" that pervades the gender.

Probably an unhealthy situation, but my understanding is that a man talking about his problems is seems as undesireable/unattractive/not-manly by both men and women.

(This post is not meant to any claim of "which gender has it worse" or anything of that nature, as I find the whole "my suffering is worse than your suffering" line to be counterproductive)

Men can talk about their smaller problems with one very specific caveat: they have to be sharing their plan to resolve it. For example someone feeling "sad" would be a weird conversation to have if it weren't a deep depression. However "I'm building a shed to keep my mind off things" is an acceptable way to share your feelings. The other exception is if you've both experience the same upsetting event together.

I've found that men are OK with talking about more serious feelings directly, for example if someone close to you died. This would largely depend on your friends though.

Your invitation wasn't to me, but I hope it's ok if I take you up on it. Here is a very personal gripe: some of the women in group A express their frustration by shaming and accusing men beyond what seems justified. But this is often accompanied with the argument that men don't have standing to push back on any of these accusations or ridicule.

The worst example I know is this article that invalidates a vulnerable and personal story by reading it in the most uncharitable and mean-spirited way, such that no empathy with the man is possible.

http://www.rawstory.com/2014/12/mit-professor-explains-the-r...

Similar to the "code of blue" when it comes to police misconduct, no one seems willing to criticize fellow women when stuff like this comes out and say "that's uncalled for" or "that's not what feminism is about."

I won't tell my personal story here, but it has similarities to Scott's.

While I do agree that the case highlighted shows a rather uncharitable reaction to said personal anecdote, I suspect your advice could be turned around itself in a number of circumstances. Live and let live. Somebody tells a personal story with a somewhat-incomplete perspective? Live and let live. Some stranger on the internet paints the sky as falling because of said anecdote being shared? Live and let live. Both acts remind me of the old 'someone's wrong on the internet' XKCD comic.

I don't think you understand the power of group ridicule. There is a difference between someone being wrong somewhere (as in XKCD) and someone attacking things about your personhood, while making heady moral arguments that their attacks are justified and your defenses are not.

    However, I rarely see personal gripes.
    I'd invite you to actually make a personal gripe, because it will be more topical than dragging up an age-old trope.

Scott Aaronson tried this.

They tried to destroy his life.

This surprised no-one.

Maybe that's why more people don't do it?

Scott Aaranson thought the experience went pretty well for him:

https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-for-you-to-be-widely-...

"destroy his life" is comical hyberbole, and shows the same absurd provincialism that Aaronson initially showed when he claimed that "nerdy men are in fact among the least privileged men out there", blissfully ignorant of the people who weren't raised in upper-middle-class households or get invited to special schools for the gifted.

I definitely don't think "tried to destroy his life" is hyperbole at all. In this case, they didn't succeed.

This is why I usually don't post in threads like these. Grandparent asked for an example of men griping. I gave one. When people tell me about their problems, I try to sincerely listen, not tell them that their problems aren't so bad because some other area of their life is okay. I'd like to ask for the same courtesy.

I think some people (like grandparent) truly don't realize when their (well-meaning) efforts to empower some people unjustly invalidate other people.

I doubt that grandparent would use the words "comical hyberbole" if exactly the same treatment had been doled out to someone because they were female, gay, trans, etc. In my opinion, such people have forgotten the concept of justice being blind.

Yes. This.

My theory is that Silicon Valley (aka "white men" in the most air-quotes way possible) have moved on to solving the problems of the whole world (whether the world wants them to or not) because they don't have acute social obstacles they have to deal with.

The rest of us have things that bother us every day: we work on fixing those. There's no app for that: it takes the hard work of millions of women and people of color every day. Hard work that is assumed as a "given" by most companies.

And this is in no way a critique of white men for not working on these problems: they're not your problems to solve. Just please don't tear us down when all we're trying to to is claw our way up to your level. A little support (even purely verbal) goes a long way.

Just please don't tear us down when all we're trying to to is claw our way up to your level. A little support (even purely verbal) goes a long way.

Here's an honest question so I understand your perspective: what is an example of verbal support that someone could say to, e.g. you, that you believe you would appreciate in the moment and not interpret as patronizing or condescending?

My personal experience (and that of others I know who fall into what you'd colloquially call "privileged" groups) is that it feels safer to not remark on an individual's race or gender at all unless you know them really well, even in a positive and supportive way, for fear of it backfiring and being interpreted as bigoted.

Maybe you can't come up with an example because it's highly context specific, in which case that's fine, I'm just wondering if you have a comment on delivery in social contexts.

I think it's a mistake to assume that anybody who isn't complaining about something doesn't have anything to complain about. Look at somebody like Robin Williams. Who expected him to kill himself? Nobody.

In general, men are discouraged from complaining about their problems in public. It's unseemly and unmasculine. So to be fair to everyone, we should not assume that the volume of complaints is any reflection on how hard people's lives are.

Yes. The big company i work for has a new popular mailing list where anonymous happenings related to sexism/racism are sent, and weekly summaries are sent out. Frequently you see something like "I (female) was asked by my manager to not work on anything that he wasn't aware of"

It's really hard to imagine that this is an instance of sexism, or that men aren't sometimes treated similalrly. Yes , we don't see equivalent "I (male)" statements, but maybe because men generally don't want to complain, or think that it is a personal issue and they don't generalize it to a gender issue

Millions of women and minorities are working hard every day to solve this problem? What are they doing? Who is paying them for their work?

Your theory doesn't account why certain classes of immigrants(specifically Indian and Chinese), often marginalized in society, seem to do so well in silicon valley. Do they get lumped in with "white men" too?

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