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Comment by deltaoneseven | Hacker News Reader

The author is a man. This is an article sharing his experiences driving drunk people very late at night, which tend to be older men because women and younger men tend to leave earlier.

I do not see this article as an attack on men. It is concerned with the behavior of a subset of people who are getting excessively drunk. And again, the author seems to want to share or "vent" about what he is experiencing. Maybe even encourage people to look at the situation and consider if something needs to be changed in terms of social expectations or bars policies.

As for the touching part, I don't see how it is hard to know that one must not touch others without their permission, regardless of gender. All humans have autonomy over their bodies and in exception of times of some emergency, consent has to be given either explicitly or implicitly. Unwanted touching is especially threatening to women because they are physically smaller and in more danger. Yes, not all men are a violent threat but _too many_ men are. Women need to play it safe. It might hurt your feelings, but it might save their lives.

Another angle that might matter for this as well, is that sometimes people "de-humanize" service workers such as drivers and treat them more like tools which is often evident in ignoring their personal space, time, and opinions.

Since this is a charged topic for you, take a moment to contextualize what you read and consider your biases or insecurities before making a judgement next time. The last decade has had so much unnecessary fraught discourse online that is not helping anybody but those who want to cause harm. The internet would be a better place if we all spend a bit more time to understand each other more.

A common methodology I use to check biases for articles is to replace a target demographic with an other. In this case I could switch all reference to the demographic of the male gender to African American and check if the article becomes racist. The title would distinctly raise some alarms, as would the highlighted sections, primarily those things that the editor is likely responsible for. The article itself isn't too terrible, through I suspect that people would have some concerns about the underlying tone if African Americans would be singled out in such negative way, and would question the motives of the author.

> Then she threatens to throw him out in the middle of nowhere because he was about to touch her on the shoulder.

The article was written by a male. It is “he threatens to throw him out” and “he was about to touch him on the shoulder”

It is very clearly stated in this part: “That hadn’t happened to me, but maybe it would be less likely for male drivers.“ Also by the fact that the author is called “Peter Jakubowicz”.

I’m wondering what made you miss this?

The author is a female with chosen gender of male.

Its actually even worse if he was a man. He's a man attacking men and overreacting to something that obviously was much less likely to be a threat. Its a man touching another dudes shoulder, why threaten to throw him out of the car? My statement still stands regardless of this persons sex.

It might be going out on a limb, but after reading this article and following him in Twitter, I don’t think you are correct in your multiple assertions that he is a transgender man.

https://twitter.com/pfjakubowicz

Not sure why you’re so worked up about this. The guy was in the middle of telling a story about how he’d already been kicked out for inappropriate touching. If someone else didn’t like his touching enough to kick him out of their car, why would he feel the need to demonstrate it again? If some drunk creep wanted to touch me to prove his case about how it should have been okay to touch his other drivers I’d kick him out too.

Not worked up. Just stating the facts. Don't understand how his twitter invalidates the fact?

> Why assume all men are some kind of violent threat?

Because many men are a violent threat to women (particular when drunk) and there's no way to be sure until it's too late.

Also the author appears to be male.

For anyone downvoting - feel free to offer some counter argument. Or try asking the women in your life whether there is any truth to what I'm saying.

Feel free to offer some actual evidence or statistics.

It's easy to find:

https://stoprape.humboldt.edu/statistics

https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-dom...

And like I said - talk to the women in your life; many of them will have been victims of some sort of sexual abuse, and I wager many more than among your male friends.

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