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Comment by taway060619 | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been feeling a pretty intense sort of depression and loneliness for the last month or so.

The feelings of “you’re a white male and you work in tech and you are wealthy you are a SATAN” is just becoming too much :(.

I volunteer a tremendous amount in education, where I’m the only male I generally even see in my field, and I constantly have to listen to my coworkers gleefully talk about how excited they are at how few young boys show up to our events. I hear them blatantly express disdain when a couple do.

Its so, so sad. I try getting away from the news, but then it creeps into my life anyway.

I’m not some devil because of my genitals, my sexual orientation, or the color of my skin. I volunteer so much of my time specifically to the homeless and less fortunate, I give so much money to charity, I do so much stuff in my community...and yet I just have to hear almost constantly that I am everything wrong with the world because I am an evil, cis, white, monogamous, straight male. I tick every single box of bad guy it seems like there is, and I don’t want to be the bad guy. I actually try really hard to be a nice guy.

It just makes me so so sad :(. And if I ever do even mention that, it just makes it even worse, hence the throwaway account.

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Don't beat yourself up over it. I myself am transgender and I am still regularly banned from LGBTQ+ online communities simply because I am not an activist and caution against extremism.

For many people, it is a cultural war. You are either "with us" or "against us".

Online media and online narratives are written in such a way that anyone outside your own group is perceived as evil. The filtering bubble effect of closed communities ("safe spaces") often aggravates the situation. I have seen people with balanced positions turn to the far right and others to the far left in knee jerk reactions to negative experiences.

What you hear is the loud minority of a minority. Racism and sexism against white males do exist. The people who hold those values are just as bigoted as any other racist or sexist individuals.

Most well rounded and balanced humans won't tell you that any demographic is "evil". In fact, most people just want to spend their days without thinking about others.

> Most well rounded and balanced humans won't tell you that any demographic is "evil".

This. We must break down own issues and barriers to truly connect to others.

Just a piece of advice: try to take a step back and listen more carefully to the complaints you're hearing. When people talk about dismantling the patriarchy, or about racial privilege, they are not actually talking about any one particular person. You are fully able to be white, male, privileged, and still be an ally to those who do not benefit as much from the power structures in our society.

Instead of feeling personally attacked when you hear these issues discussed, try to remember we are all on the same team, fighting to tackle problems that are bigger than just one individual.

Take for example a comment from this very thread: "Feminism has brought about a lot of changes, but I don't think we can lay this one at the feet of women trying to escape their compulsory reliance on unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate men."

How should we take a step back and listen more carefully to this? How are we to interpret that other than as an attack on all men?

Are you an unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate man? If the answer is yes, then it's an attack on you ... if however you work to be reliable, selfless, and considerate, then it's not an attack on you.

Surely, you have to acknowledge that throughout history, men have been quite terrible to women ... and yes, some of that exists still today. So that being the case, you _must_ understand that for many women out there, it's still a struggle to live their life in a way that is not negatively influenced by some men.

Men have been more terrible to other men. And women have also been terrible to other women, and to men. A lot of men have lived with spouses that have made their lives incredibly shitty but it was not acceptable for them to leave either.

And it is not like the traditional gender roles means "Men has it ok and women's lives are worse".

Well, surely being either reliable, unselfish, or considerate will suffice. Fortunately, as someone notoriously unreliable and selfish, being considerate seems to be enough.

"Surely, you have to acknowledge that throughout history, men have been quite terrible to women"

Yes of course but what I don't understand is why you're choosing to focus exclusively on one narrow aspect of the entire history of human cruelty. Men have been at least as terrible to other men as they have ever been to women. And women are not without the ability to be cruel either. Are you suggesting that it's OK for men to be terrible to other men but women should be a proctected group? That is already largely the case according to my understanding of western Judeo-Christian tradition.

"You _must_ understand that for many women out there, it's still a struggle to live their life in a way that is not negatively influenced by some men.

Again, why focus on such a narrow aspect of the problem? The vast majority of men also struggle to live their life in a way that is not negatively influenced by 'some men'.

Pay attention to the syntax, it's not an attack on all men. It's quite specifically an attack on "unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate men."

These men do exist, and these men have historically used societal norms to trap women in marriages or work that was unfair. It's great that we are working toward a society which recognizes that this is harmful and allows these women to seek better opportunity for themselves!

Ah, but what about "unreliable, selfish and inconsiderate" women? Are we "allowed" to attack them or is that 'sexist'? Everyone agrees that being unreliable, selfish and inconsiderate is not great, but using this as a character smear directed towards one single gender is just wrong, whether it's "men" or "women".

> It's quite specifically an attack on "unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate men."

That's one very generous way to read it. The other is that men are unreliable, selfish and inconsiderate, which is pretty much what I've heard over the past 5 years from most people that identify as feminist.

... and the principal of charity suggest that, instead of automatically engaging outrage mode, you should try to interpret it in the most charitable way possible.

Sure, there are certainly some women who say things like this who are also misandrists, but the majority of them are not, and just want to call out the men who are actually a problem. If you're not a problem, then you're not being called out. That's been my experience. Either you've somehow managed to speak only to the most cynical and hateful of feminists, or -- more likely -- you're getting defensive over something for no good reason.

The ironic bit is that you're falling into the same trap: you're accusing "every" feminist of believing that all men are evil, based on your interactions with a few.

Pretty disingenuous of you to put the word "every" in quotation marks when the person you're responding to used the word "most".

In the principal of charity I'll assume it was an honest mistake.

> ... and the principal of charity suggest that, instead of automatically engaging outrage mode, you should try to interpret it in the most charitable way possible.

I didn't engage "outrage mode", I pointed out that you were missing/leaving out an alternative way to parse that message, one that I consider likely to be correct.

> Sure, there are certainly some women who say things like this

Let me make that clear: I explicitly wrote feminist, not women. Sex/Gender isn't involved, it's ideology, and many of the most atrocious things I've heard came from male feminists (coincidentally, those I found very reasonable among them were exclusively women). Please don't put words into my mouth by implying I talked about women in general.

> If you're not a problem, then you're not being called out.

That sounds like "I'm with them, so I don't mind that". Sure, cool for you, I'm not. "Men are scum" doesn't sit right with me, and I don't believe that I'm overly defensive for no good reason or should just "listen more carefully to the complaints".

> you're accusing "every" feminist of believing that all men are evil

No, I'm not (again with the words). I'm stating what I've heard & read from feminists. I haven't talked to most or all feminists on the planet, obviously. But of the ones I did talk to, most went right down that path. As soon as I've gotten around to talking to those that I haven't yet, I'm going to update my comment and extend it to inform about my experiences with all feminists.

I'm with you on the syntax and I'll point out (as people may forget) that the "compulsory reliance" part is the real stickler. It's only in 1974 that the US passed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act; before that, a man was required to cosign for any loan or credit a woman applied for (if you were unmarried for any reason, including widowed, you'd have to find a guy somewhere). Before the 1960s, in the US women could be required to have a male attached to any bank account they opened, or could be denied the opportunity to open a bank account.

It's not that men are terrible. It's that if you have to find a man to avoid homelessness, sometimes you are stuck with terrible men, as polygamy is illegal.

> before that, a man was required to cosign for any loan or credit a woman applied for (if you were unmarried for any reason, including widowed, you'd have to find a guy somewhere

Guess what, there was a reason for that (sort of): namely, back then it was the women who were commonly - indeed, almost universally - stereotyped as "unreliable, selfish and inconsiderate", and thus as bad credit risks. Again, it just goes to prove that character smears are wrong in the first place. It's not a convincing defense of parent's attitude, at all.

No, it was not about character, it was about not having an income because women were not a large part of the formally paid labor force. It was quite legal and in fact the norm to pay women less than men, and it was in general required that women leave their jobs once they got married or once they got pregnant.

The syntax looks like just wailed hatred, just like all other wailed hatred.

People are not against immigrants, just the illegal ones that murder, rape and steal. People are also not against Muslims, just the extremists.

If we follow syntax there are no racists in the world and we can simply accuse people of not paying attention. I think that is wrong way to view it. If we talk about "unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate immigrants" then what people will read is that all immigrants are bad. That just how that kind of language get interpreted, and the assumption is that the speaker is aware of it and thus intended it.

I have a simple test. When in doubt I do a word for word replacement and replace the word "men" with "immigrants" and "women" with "natively born". If that make a sentence or article sound like a racist, then it is wailed hate. If it sounds perfectly fine regardless who is targeted then it is not.

But in this case the original author proposed that the liberation of women and feminism was contributing to loneliness and that was the reply. So i.e. feminism makes women less dependent on unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate men so that is not the cause of loneliness.

Let us say someone would say that the increased loneliness instead came from the rise of online gaming/porn/communities and that men in larger degree become less interested in meeting women and making an effort.

If someone then answered that "Men avoiding unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate women by online gaming is not a problem" you would probably see that statement as misogynistic. Even if that description does match some women.

(I fully agree with the liberation of women (and men) from many of the traditional gender roles.)

I can kind of understand people having such a knee-jerk reaction to the original article. The first part reads like someone like Jordan Peterson preaching the return to a family lifestyle according to "Judeo-Christian values" while ignoring all the reasons society changed. I nearly dropped the article there as well. The remaining part got a lot better, though it still feels like only describing problems and leaving the task of imagining solutions up to the reader, with an implied direction.

Agreed about the beginning of the article. It started to feel like the author’s value judgements were slipped in there, but later when they acknowledged “some might not see this as all bad” I felt a little better about it.

IMO complaints like this, and modern feminism aren’t about “men are bad” they’re about s lack of power that women have relative to men in the existing system, which leads to an inability to determine their futures and live free.

I mean, you're not even wrong as far as that goes, but you might just be missing the point. "Racial privilege" is the latest variation on "bourgeois privilege", and we all know how toxic that idea was. Maybe he doesn't want to play on the Maoist team, or be its "ally". That's okay too. No one should be forced to deal with that kind of toxic, negative messaging.

> I volunteer a tremendous amount in education, where I’m the only male I generally even see in my field, and I constantly have to listen to my coworkers gleefully talk about how excited they are at how few young boys show up to our events. I hear them blatantly express disdain when a couple do.

But people are not agreeing about the causes of the problems or the solutions. So if you say "Yeah, but I'm not talking about all white people" you should be able to exchange that to "black" instead and still not be racist for it not to be racist for example.

People are very similar. It is nice to find a common enemy and it is nice to generalize. So on 4chan people analyze and find that black people are the problem and generalize about black people and in certain groups people find that white men are the problem and tend to generalize about white men.

How is this different than someone saying "I think feminists are trash, and feminists who disagree with me should take time to understand what I mean."

In other words, do you understand why what you are saying is victim blaming?

Where do you live that has this attitude? Perhaps you could relocate to someplace more friendly. I live in the southern U.S., volunteered in a majority womens group and never heard comments approaching anything like what you described. Everyone was very welcoming and nice. Try a different industry or location. You don’t have any obligation to put up with being insulted.

You live in Seattle, don't you? The reason I ask is because I feel more or less the same way.

I wake up at 6 am so that I can volunteer as a teaching assistant for public school CS classes.

I work with a dog rescue, spending weekends cleaning poop out of kennels and walking dogs.

And yet, native Seattleites will still accuse me of ruining "their" city. I doubt that most of these people make a fraction of the amount of effort that I do to contribute to the community. They just sit on their asses and complain on social media.

> And yet, native Seattleites will still accuse me of ruining "their" city.

If you listen to them, their complaints are likely not that "there's too much dog poop" and "kids these days just don't know enough cs" but rather "money is making the city unlivable for those not connected to tech".

> I doubt that most of these people make a fraction of the amount of effort that I do to contribute to the community. They just sit on their asses and complain on social media.

You're literally doing the same thing you're accusing them of. Besides, effort is a really poor metric for measuring the effect you have on the world.

> If you listen to them, their complaints are likely not that "there's too much dog poop" and "kids these days just don't know enough cs" but rather "money is making the city unlivable for those not connected to tech".

These same people rail against the inequality and exclusivity of the tech industry, and the borders which are drawn around socioeconomic, racial, and gender lines. I am making a significant personal sacrifice to mitigate this issue for future generations by providing the exact CS mentorship and guidance that these people are (rightfully) complaining that they lack. I have directly seen the effects of my efforts on these kids, including a few who have gone on to gasp study CS! In a few short years, they may even be my co-workers, and have completely broken out of the cycle of poverty.

Knowing the positive impact I have had on other peoples lives, and my community at large is a beautiful thing, and I am certain that it outweighs however much my presence is "driving up housing prices" (I live on the east side anyway, so it's a moot point regardless).

Your reflexive dismissal of this not-insignificant contribution and refusal to acknowledge the point being made here is unfortunate. But way to try to reduce this to "there's too much dog poop". You've provided HN readers with a prime example of manipulative framing and intellectual dishonesty.

> I am making a significant personal sacrifice to mitigate this issue for future generations by providing the exact CS mentorship and guidance that these people are (rightfully) complaining that they lack.

I'm sure the people being displaced by tech workers are warmed by this thought. If I am being reductive and manipulative, it is at least as reductive and manipulative to compare the problem of diversity in tech to the problem of capital rapidly gentrifying and displacing people.

I am grateful you provide to the community, but this attitude of "I doubt that most of these people make a fraction of the amount of effort that I do to contribute to the community." is incredibly toxic and narcissistic.

>And yet, native Seattleites will still accuse me of ruining "their" city.

When?

Do they come up to you and point fingers and blame you?

Are they your friends or just strangers?

Why do you care what they think at all?

Everyone has to deal with the particular voices in their head. Women, men, genderqueer, whatever color; the voices in our head tailor themselves to attack our own particular worries, because they're part of us.

You have a part of you that is aware of the random lucky breaks you've gotten in life, which might not have been lucky in other times or places. That's a fine thing -- it's useful. But then you've got a part of you that takes that further and makes you feel undeserving, or makes you pick up and amplify on comments that resonate with that feeling of attack. Why?

To go back to the article, etc., do you have countervailing messages in your life, from family for instance?

I'm someone currently organizing a bunch of STEM outreach events for the summer, and I truly value my white dude allies who are volunteering, connecting me with speakers using their networks, asking their corporate overlords to fund us, and so on.

There is a ton of negativity in the world, as you alluded to, and we all pick up on the messages that are designed to hit us. This is a human problem, and you're not alone.

> Everyone has to deal with the particular voices in their head.

The "voices in their head" that are other people's voices?

You pick up on some of them. How often do you feel bad about your thigh gap, or lack thereof? It's someone else's comment that you amplify or don't based on your circumstances. How often do you worry about the quality of the embroidery for your trousseau? Guessing not, because it's just not a thing today. How often do you worry that you're evil because you're a white male? How often do you worry that you're a slut and will go to hell?

You're probably not affected by the ads for skin-whitening creams aimed at dark-skinned women. You probably are more affected by the ads that insinuate your pecs aren't big enough. We amplify the negative messages from outside that hit us where we live.

> You pick up on some of them

Sure. My question was more to the point that the parent post wasn't about an unhealthy internal monologue, but about other people.

Letting your internal voice run wild with negative emotions is a problem, but it's very different from dealing with the words of other people. A black woman listening to people around her saying that black women are worthless and that it's a blessing that fewer of them are around nowadays doesn't have a problem with her inner voice amplifying insecurities, she has a problem with actually existing racists around her.

Absolutely. These voices have been called "the superego" but lately you might also hear "the voices of inner critics". In some traditions they are referred to as "the adversary", "the liar", "the devil", "the oppressor". People who fall into the void of schizotypal disorders often hear these voices very literally, and are unable to recognize them as their own inner projections of societal judgements. These internalized voices usually miss the point of what external critics are actually saying. They are echos of other peoples voices, cast in the form of our deepest, most ruthless fears and doubts.

That's not to say that people don't go around actually saying awful bigoted things. They do. They have forever. It's up to each of us to sort through them, to listen to them with courage, to protect and care for ourselves in spite of them. And if we truly care about stopping this pain, it's up to each of us to learn how to avoid reacting to external hate with our own flagrant shit.

People of color and poor people have been listening to bigoted lies and hatred for a long time now.

If you want to learn how to care for yourself in the face of internalized hatred, there are so many leaders who have led the way. Martin Luther King helped me. I've also found a lot of understanding from Krista Tippett's podcast "On Being."

'White people' are now compelled to hear a kind of racialized hatred that many have been largely insulated from until now. Maybe it's the internet? Maybe it's the politics? Either way, hate is out here in force right now and it spares no one, not even white people.

Where the hell do you live that you not only experience this but experience it enough that it affects your mental health. I've lived in multiple states, worked for multiple companies and I've yet to experience either the extreme SJW, or the extreme bigotry/racism side of things.

It's not a problem for you, and therefore not a problem, amiright?

which is why i'm asking him where he lives...

If you feel that these voices are stupid or even callous, why can't you just see that as that, and prompty ignore them? You're not the problem, they are.

It's more problematic if you're depressed at the state of the world, i.e. that so many people voice wrong and hurtful convictions - that I can somewhat sympathise with.

Don't try to win over people by appeasing them, it won't work and you'll hate yourself in the end. Helping those in need is great, but you need to do it in a way that doesn't burn you out. It sounds like that's the route you're on.

>I constantly have to listen to my coworkers gleefully talk about how excited they are at how few young boys show up to our events. I hear them blatantly express disdain when a couple do.

This is not appropriate behavior. There’s no excuse for discriminating against children.

It’s okay to be bothered by this. It’s okay to call people out when they do this. In practice you need to be extremely polite and patient, and offer measured criticisms.

Rise up over that bs. Something is wrong with the world, not with you.

> I am everything wrong with the world because I am an evil, cis, white, monogamous, straight male.

Maybe work on the part about being evil. The rest of the the things you listed grant you an advantage in life even today.

Who calls you a devil? Can you name any explicit times when people have mentioned or acted in a way regarding your sexuality/gender/profession?

Go to a different volunteer place. This one sounds kinda fun by assholes.

Find some people that appreciate you, and leave the ungrateful ones to rot in their own venom. Life is too short to give the time of day to people that just want to tear you down. Like the horse in Animal Farm, if you give more, they'll take more, until you are nothing but a bitter, worn out husk.

where do you live ? why are you satan because you work in tech ?

Yes but are you able to say you have a friendship on an equal ground with trust going on with any of the homeless you help out? To the extent that you use euphemisms to explain their homeless situation?

Stick with it, there are rewards, if one of your homeless friends cooks you a meal or takes you out for your birthday or even lends you money then I think you can re-evaluate this 'helping' thing.

Also try and do things with money more as personal philanthropy, not through a structured charity. You would be surprised at how that works out. People do get back on their feet at they do pay you back. It can be important for them to do so because you were that person there for them when nobody else was.

It is possible to be white, male, cis-gendered, educated, able to earn money and still be treated as a world citizen. Intellect is universally appreciated, but it has to come with listening and willingness. People of all walks of life from all over the globe should be able to sense a happiness and peace that you have deep within, to get this within seconds of meeting you.

You could be spending your time with the upwardly mobile, going places crowd. Or you could give up your time to be best buddies with that elderly guy who can't remember what he did two minutes ago. Or some homeless local. In normal upwardly mobile society that would be a shameful thing to do - waste time on the 'weak'. Your rotten coworkers are stuck in this paradigm.

So you have to do things for your own motivations and ignore the crowd. There also has to be some reward in it for you. Seeing someone get their health back and their sense of being back is pretty good, particularly if you can look back on it and not be able to take any credit, with them having done it all themselves. Same in the educational setting, you should be able to reflect and realise they did whatever it was.

There is a difference between 'help' and 'enabling'. Receiving is also important, if your homeless buddy makes you something or pays you back (when some random grandparent dies) then that is more like it. Obviously you cannot take gifts from senile old folk because they don't know what they are doing!!!

Sometimes the personal philanthropy budget can grow rather than shrink. This is not a given, but people do get insurance payouts, fluffy animals can turn out to be insured and people do move on in their lives to not need the same material stuff. The more audacious you are with transformative sums with zero strings attached then the more likely it is that you will get calls out the blue with random Christmasesque paybacks.

You talk of feeling depressed and lonely, if you were to be realistic about the world then you could think that this is actually a fair and realistic sentiment.

I think you will feel a lot happier if you move from formal charity things to personal philanthropy projects. Long term commitment to two people at a time is more the idea rather than turning up once a year at Christmas time to dole out sub standard food to the 'less fortunate'. (Not saying you do that conscience-buying charidy thing).

Right now you could take on some co-worker's loser teenage child and give them some data entry work and the space to grow a bit. Give it time and they could be the child your co-worker is most proud of, to go on to get the exams and everything. With one of your homeless buddies you could put together a single page website for their dog walking business, doing the SEO and picking up useful skills in design that would not be allowed in the day job. Just apply the hacker mentality.

>The feelings of “you’re a white male and you work in tech and you are wealthy you are a SATAN” is just becoming too much :(.

Yeah this literally doesn't happen.

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