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Comment by gus_massa | Hacker News Reader

This is his main job [1], so I guess he had no problems at home. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Parker Also, his wife has a technical background and have some similar activities (but not full time, IIUC), so she probably even helped.

[1] Or at least this is the kind of potentially viral videos that can increase his internet presence and his revenue in the live talks and shows.

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She is a Physics professor at UCL, and works on solar Physics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucie_Green

She is also quite nerdy.

I feel that OP’s idea that Parker’s wife wouldn’t be on board with “nerdy/tech-y stuff” smacks of sexism to me. No reason she couldn’t be an equal partner in this, or at least a non-detractor.

100% agree. I did a very similar project this year - at my wife's insistence. Guess who's done most of the programming now that I've got the techy hardware side done?

If that's the case why didn't he mention her help?

Parker definitely mentions her input and discussions they have about these topics in other videos and interviews.

I'm not sure that she helps him, but looking at the sibling comment, it is not a bad guess.

I ask my wife a lot of questions, for example if I get stuck in a calculation or a result makes no sense. Sometimes about the redaction of a sentence. Sometimes just general questions over diner.

She ask me too. I remember that she was missing a transpose sign in his dissertation, and I found the error. It was a tiny fix, and no worth mentioning.

Horse: He made a joke.

Zebra: He's a sexist pig who can't fathom the idea of a technical woman working on something with her technical husband.

You might be seeing sexism where there is none. His wife (partner) might really be a man (I have no idea and don't really care) and it would not make any difference on OP's comment (I assume it can happen that one person in a couple has a very seemingly useless hobby which is so time consuming that it impacts their house keeping involvement, regardless of their genders).

"wife" doesn't mean "partner", in case anyone else reading this thinks otherwise.

If you don't want to assume a man is heterosexual, don't assume he has a wife.

Yes, i guess "wife" assumes he has a partner, that this partner is a woman, and probably that they are married too. I don't think any of this really matters here, I think the joke can be understood even if none of those assumptions are true :)

Also, if we are nitpicking, I'll add that the gender of the person you are married with is only loosely related to your sexual preference (ie there might be homosexual men that are married to a woman for some reasons - cultural or legal for example, depending on the country you live in) ;)

You're not wrong that all words about human identity and behavior and politics have fuzzy (or really no) boundaries. But this is not a nitpick you can apply to my statement. I'm not saying to assume people's sexuality from their gender and the gender of their partner.

If your stance is that it's not necessarily sexist, which honestly I respect in part, it's nonsense to argue that the comment may not be sexist, because "wife" may mean "husband". It's not a competition to see who can make the fewest assumptions.

I did not mean that wife means husband in general, but I meant that it may not have been used here to specifically point out the gender of the partner but more generically (as it's common for to assume opposite gender for the partner even without malice)

Do you not see how the two go hand-in-hand, your "gay man married to a woman because it's illegal to be gay in his country" and "it's common to assume opposite gender"?

I don't know what malice means to you, but I can tell you on my behalf and on behalf of many queer people (I won't claim to speak for all, but I know I speak for many), you should not assume the opposite gender for the partner, and it is unnecessary to defend someone who makes the mistake. Ultimately, it _is_ a factual error, and it is invalidating.

What I meant by malice is someone whose point would be "it's abnormal to be married to someone of the same gender" vs someone assuming the most common case without holding any judgement on whether it's normal or good, and without the intent of hurting anyone (I do understand that it can still hurt/vex some people, as anything else you can say with the best intent, but I still think intent does count)

I agree intent counts. You start by saying "You might be seeing sexism where there is none.". To me, our comments are summarized with:

You: "it might not be sexism because people often assume heterosexuality, but the statement could apply to a partner of any gender"

Me: "well then that's heterosexist"

You: People can make the heterosexual assumption without bad intentions, so it's not heterosexist either"

And that is true only for a narrow definition of sexism and heterosexism. Do you want to give a different name to the assumption that people are straight? Do you want to give a different name to the assumption that someone's wife isn't on board with his technical pursuits? I already have a name for those patterns, heterosexism and sexism, and I can grasp the nuances and subtleties of different forms. What is YOUR intent? To reserve those words for cases where there is ill intent?

Ah I had never heard "heterosexism", I learned a new word. I just checked a bunch of definitions, and I would now use "heterocentrism" for presumption of heterosexuallity - it's possible to presume that without thinking it's the norm, but just because in practice in many places it's more common. Just like when I hear someone named Daniel(le) I assume it's a man because I know more man Daniel than woman, but I do not think there is anything wrong or abnormal with a woman named that way. So yes I would kind of reserve sexism (or heterosexism now) for cases when the remark carries some negativity related to a given gender (or sexual orientation). And I still stick with my original impression that OP did not carry any negativity towards women (at least we can fairly give them "reasonable doubt"), but that they were just making a joke about living with someone else in general.

Sorry for the long thread and I hope I have not offended you. I'm always interested in having other points of views so I like this kind of discussion. Also English is not my native language, so there might have been things lost in translation.

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