Hacker News Reader

Comment by toohotatopic | Hacker News Reader

Nice story but it feels distracting. She wasn't the pilot, she didn't build the boat. What's the story being told? That women can reach everything if men make it possible?

>All told, EYOS Expeditions said that just seven people had reached the point before Sullivan, all of whom were men.

So most likely none of the other seven was an astronaut. This makes Sullivan the first person to walk space and reach the deepest point of the ocean. The story is that one person was in space and at the deepest point, not that a woman was there, too.

With that perspective, what does she have to say? The article doesn't let her speak, besides a short quote that is shorter than the tweet of the piloting man. If that voyage is an achievement to be taken as guidance, why is there no interview? They can send a picture so they can exchange questions and answers.

View on HN

I think the point is the poetry of the contrast, the two extremes. The fact that she was the first woman in space is what makes her notable, not the fact that she was the first woman to be in both space and the bottom of the ocean. If it was "some astronaut," that would be weird. Which astronaut? You could say her name, but most people aren't going to know her by name. So you say the first woman to walk in space. She apparently was also the first woman to reach Challenger Deep. The fact that she reached two opposite extremes, but with obvious unifying similarities, is interesting. The fact that she was also the first woman to do both of those thing in isolation is also interesting. The story is interesting.

> The fact that she was the first woman in space

> most people aren't going to know her by name. So you say the first woman to walk in space

She wasn't the first woman in space.

That was Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova in 1963.

She wasn't the first woman to walk in space.

That was Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya in 1984.

She wasn't the first American woman in space.

That was Sally Ride in 1983.

She was the first American woman to do a spacewalk.

I stand corrected.

But it seems she if the first woman of any nationality into Challenger Deep, that is the more interesting/notable factoid than the space walk one.

If women are equal then it's not notable to be the first woman to do anything.

It is obviously not the case that women are equal in our society. Additionally, then, my town shouldn't have a big placard that says "home of Olympic gold medalist [some person]" since obviously being from my town is equal to being from the one over. But we do typically care about these sorts of things, and we care about the oldest person to be president, the youngest, the first gay, Catholic, whatever, black president. We care about coincidences, streaks, and firsts of all manner and no one has to point out that that it doesn't matter "X will be the first foreign-born CEO" or whatever it is. To assert that being a woman specifically is not notable feels like it just serves to downplay people's accomplishments when those accomplishments are made by women.

The point the commenter above made was that women are equally capable.

The fact that people are discussing it, and so agitated by the use of the word "woman" shows, if anything, that they aren't equal and there is still much work to be done.

Articles like this enforce that inequality. I'm 100% for equal rights, equal opportunity and equal recognition, unlike you, or the people that write articles like this. The use of the word "woman" implicitly means "this has been done by men before". And in that case people like you find it remarkable simply because it was done by a woman, which is enforcing inequality. If you want equality, change the title to "US woman becomes first person to walk in space and dive to deepest part of the ocean". That's (arguably) notable and doesn't imply that I'm congratulating her because she did it despite being a woman.

Until and unless society truly has equal rights/opportunity/recognition, it behooves us to fete those who do the very hard things, with an extra helping of overcoming institutional/societal barriers due to their inherent characteristics.

It gives hope to those who fear that those barriers are so large as to be insurmountable and without which many of those would choose not to try.

Saying we don't have equal rights is a serious claim and one that would need backing up.

As for equal opportunity and recognition, I would say it's often skewed in favour of women right now. A woman can find a job in tech quite easily because, for some reason, companies want to hire women. That's not equality. Recognition is also higher for women. Women don't have to be first or best to get recognised, they just have to be the first or best woman. There's no such thing as "first man". It's often repeated that the first programmer was a woman. OK, so who was the first male programmer? Nobody knows or cares.

Wait two seconds, is she the first person to both go to space and reach that depth in the ocean, or is she the first woman to do it?

Based on the title it lead me to think that a man had done that before her and the achievement she accomplished here was being the first US woman to do both. Otherwise the article would had said said person and world record without qualifying the achievement by gender and nationality.

The article does not specify if any of the other 7 people who also reached the depth had been in space, so with the comments in here I am now more unsure what the achievement actually is.

> If it was "some astronaut," that would be weird

If it was the first astronaut to be in both places then its not weird at all. First astronaut that explore both extreme environments is an interesting achievement. I would read that story.

> I think the point is the poetry

Bingo. This isn't about science. This is about inspiring young women.

While I think there's value in recognising the first woman to do something notable, I sort of agree that it would be preferable to describe her as the first person here. Same applies to the US in my head. It's an absolute achievement, not one that needs qualification.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com