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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

Would you be OK if people often called you an abuser of women?

MikeeUSA is not (as far as we know) an abuser of women. He is a person who sends unpleasant nonthreatening emails while peacefully sitting in his home.

Your attempt to conflate people who initiate violence and people who express unpleasant opinions is dishonest.

Further, you don't have any "right to be happy". No one does. You have the right to pursue happiness in a manner which doesn't involve violence against others, but you don't have the "right to be happy". If I have a "right to be happy", then you are violating my rights by not buying me some whisky and hookers.

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The problem with your assumption is that (as any abuse counselor will tell you) abusive words are very often the precursor to violent physical action.

As someone whose wife repeatedly received abusive and threatening phone calls and emails from a former co-worker who eventually showed up at her workplace waving a gun (and luckily was restrained by a security guard in the lobby!), I can assure you that Ms Bayley should not take this lightly.

The problem with the assumption that muslims are not terrorists is that (as any terrorism investigator will tell you) fundamentalist islamic words are very often a precursor to violent physical action.

See the problem with this logic? You can't paint all people holding certain beliefs with the brush of the small subset who engage in violent acts.

No, your logic actually implies that we shouldn't paint people who say "I will come to your country and blow up your buildings" with the same brush as people who come to our country and blow up our buildings. I don't think I'm out of line to say that threats like that ought to be taken pretty seriously.

MikeeUSA has not been accused of saying "I will engage in violent acts against you, woman."

You don't have a right to happiness, but nor do you have a right to inflict emotional distress on people. And when someone is emailing unpleasant thoughts to a specific individual as opposed to expressing them on a public blog, that's crossing a line from self-expression to harassment. It is, literally, making it personal.

MikeeUSA is not (as far as we know) an abuser of women.

I understand that people usually think of abuse as sexual abuse, especially if it is toward women. But verbal or moral abuse is abuse just the same.

To express an opinion is what we're doing right now, as civilized people, openly, in a mildly non-anonymous way. To harass anonymously, without giving the other part the chance to reply and playing on their weaknesses is violence. For me, at least, it is.

Further, you don't have any "right to be happy".

I do have, as we all do. You are mixing the right to be happy with the right of being granted happiness unconditionally. Maybe it's just semantics. I would also say that everyone has the right to drive a car, expecting that I'm not implying that they can bypass the necessary tests. There is a "potential tense" that gets lost in translation.

Are you really sure they're not threatening?

Also, harassment goes far beyond trolling.

If threats were included, I'm assuming that Bayley would have mentioned it and the police would not have dismissed it as nonthreatening.

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