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Comment by gerbal | Hacker News Reader

How would HN be reacting if this were written by and about a man?

There are a lot of gender expectations that punish assertive and matter of fact women as 'bitchy' and 'insensitive'. If a white guy behaves the same way no one thinks twice about it. To me it sounds like management at Github is uncomfortable with her perspectives. We often see women and minorities censured for not trying to conform to the model of a demure, inoffensive, and compliant minority.

Much like the comments here, Github management appears to prefer to focus on the perceived personality flaws of someone who makes others uncomfortable by her presence rather than underlying issues causing their discomfort.

The "insensitivity" mentioned in the piece appears to be largely based on the fact that the author behaves much like a white guy would in these situations.

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I think if this were a man, the HN reaction would actually be far more negative.

As it stands right now, the discussion here is basically a debate over whether or not Coraline was discriminated against in some way, or if she was fired for some legitimate reason. Even if you dispute the facts of this case, there's a potential larger issue about inclusivity and discrimination in tech there that is worth talking about at least somewhat, regardless of what you think of it.

If Coraline were a man, then all that entire larger issue goes away and this post would be nothing more than a man whining about being fired. There's nothing much worth discussing about a man being fired. If anything, I'd expect that they would be censured for acting in an unseemly way for a man.

This is a presentation by Coraline given in 2013 at Ruby Midwest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2TOY4lufIM

I'm not going to watch the entire 30 minute video on my phone.

Is the point you're not actually making that Coraline previously was known as Corey and appeared to be a man?

My point is that approaching this with a "I think if this were a man..." hypothetical is doomed to end in confusion.

1. Some people will think Coraline is a man.

1a. Those people might well discriminate against Coraline for failing to live up to gender stereotypes expected of a man ("deal with it!")

2. Some people will think Coraline is a woman.

2a. Those people might well discriminate against Coraline for failing to live up to gender stereotypes expected of a woman ("more empathetic communication!")

It's not doomed to end in confusion at all. Discussing Coraline might end in confusion, but that's the whole reason for creating an abstract hypothetical to talk about in the first place.

The point of creating such a hypothetical is to imagine what sort of discussion we would be having if the subject is not Coraline. So, it doesn't matter if Coraline is a man or is a woman or a transgender woman or a transgender man or a unisexual space alien from the other side of the galaxy. We can reason about how "a man" would be treated without getting stuck on ambiguities about Coraline.

Now, what could be confusing about the hypothetical is if we're not in agreement about what "a man" means. So let me be more explicit: I'm using the default understanding of what that means, which in the tedious language of modernity means a cisgender male. For simplicity, let's assume it's a white, heteronormative male, even though I don't think the reaction would be different for non-white not-hetero cisgender males.

There's no such thing as a hypothetical or an abstract man.

> How would HN be reacting if this were written by and about a man? There are a lot of gender expectations that punish assertive and matter of fact women as 'bitchy' and 'insensitive'.

Did you just assume my reaction? (partly sarcastic).

If you know anything about tech and blogging and HN, you should know that most posts get flamed and dissected very quickly. People have very strong opinions and have very low tolerance for BS.

The only difference is, people from the "social justice" community always make it personal.

"What? You criticize me? It must be because of my race/skin/gender/religion/orientation, you bigoted monster!".

This is easily disprovable. See for example this post about being fired from the exact same company: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9158913

Despite the post having less details,there is less negativity and uncertainty. For reference as to why that might be, refer to the post you are responding to.

Context matters. Someone who opens https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 (read the tweets that she references, it is ridiculous to be upset about them) should not be surprised not to be welcomed by people doing actual work. And having his texts interpreted accordingly.

Really? "Look, someone else wrote a post about leaving github and it wasn't received as negatively! It must because one was a white male and the other was transgender."

No. How about, the tone of the post is completely different?

One Github issue is not sufficient to gain a understanding of what it would be like work with someone. Any blanks that are being filled in here are being done by yours and others baises.This a proven effect in other cases: https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/are-succes...

So many devils advocates in this thread you'd think Github hired his law firm

Umm, people are not judging Coraline based on a single Github issue, but in her own description of how the people around her behaved and what she says she thought about it. The Opal business is entirely secondary.

It's fine if you think they have biases and you want to cite The Atlantic as some sort of proof of that, but that doesn't mean that those conclusions you don't like are automatically wrong.

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