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Comment by vilda | Hacker News Reader

I heard many times women making jokes about men and especially their common incompetence in fashion. Interestingly, I never thought about that as sexism, although I should.

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If a woman at a conference for some female-dominated profession (say, nursing or elementary-school teaching) made a joke from the podium about how incompetent men were at that profession, it would be just as inappropriate.

Are you suggesting that slighting the intellect of women and doing likewise in respect of the fashion sense of a (minority/majority?) of men are equatable wrongs?

And if you are (p.s. they're not), then what relevance does it have to this topic?

Should the original author not have taken offence the 'joke' she heard during a work conference because at various points history an unspecified number of women laughed at the shirt you were wearing?

As an aside, would you be cool with this sort of advertising in 2011: http://www.oddee.com/_media/imgs/articles2/a96674_ifyourhusb...

http://www.oddee.com/_media/imgs/articles2/a96674_Blowher.jp...

Or do you accept that the world has moved on from these sort of visuals in advertising, and thus it is not unreasonable to expect the same to apply to the telling of [____]ist jokes in professional/work settings?

> Are you suggesting that slighting the intellect of women and doing likewise in respect of the fashion sense of a (minority/majority?) of men are equatable wrongs?

He wasn't slighting the general intellect of women, he was slighting their intellect in regards to java best practices. Saying a gender isn't knowledgeable about java best practices seems equitable to saying a gender isn't knowledgeable about color/design complements. Please explain how they are not so.

Perhaps because one (an individual's fashion sense) is entirely subjective (and ultimately fairly trivial) and the other is not.

Anyway, my main point was that introducing the existence of another perceived injustice is completely irrelevant to whether a wrong was perpetuated in this case.

Or are you suggesting that the underlying premise of the initial comment was not: "man up love, you lot are just as bad"?

I'm suggesting that insulting someone (male or female) on their supposed lack of intellect in regards to (what is perceived to be) a masculine interest is taken different than insulting someone on their supposed lack of intellect in regards to (what is perceived to be) a feminine interest. Cultural we perceive these masculine interests to be of greater importance (both male and female).

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