I wonder if you'd benefit from starting a new HN account, and try to not reveal anything that would let people connect it to your real identity?
BTW, I'm a guy, and I'm trying to be friendly, and I can assure you I'm not looking for a date.
BTW, I'm a guy, and I'm trying to be friendly, and I can assure you I'm not looking for a date.
But that's not workable for a long list of reasons that I'm both tired of trying to explain and tired of being told are not legitimate concerns or whatever. It boils down to this: men are not expected to hide their gender to participate online. Telling a woman to hide hers as a "solution" is dismissing her very real problems and compounding them.
It shouldn't be an offense worthy of being downvoted to hell to say "Yeah, I missed the joke for the following two reasons, one of which is no joking around allowed when talking to Doreen! Can't have that!
It's exhausting to have to err on the side of being excessively serious every minute I'm here because if I make the mistake of being my normal, friendly self, everyone wants my phone number so to speak.
Making that observation isn't me being a bitch, but getting downvoted to hell for it sure makes me sympathetic to the hords of women who openly hate on men and blame the conspiracy theory of The Patriarchy for all their ills.
Anyway, I need to go do other things. This is not a conversation I really want to have. At all.
Edited: Because auto-corrupt is the bane of my existence.
A quick parting thought: one feature of HN (with which I strongly disagree) is that downvotes require no accompanying explanation or justification.
I've sometimes been pretty vexed when my perfectly good comments got downvoted.
I'd encourage you to not read too much into a downvote. It can be impossible to divine what actually motivates each occurrence.
Pointing out a comment where this has happened would go a long way to bolster the claim.