Comment by c0riander | Hacker News Reader

Comment by c0riander | Hacker News Reader

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If we are talking about whether or not sexism occurred, then it does not in fact matter what someone said before or after they said something sexist.

I'm not trying to convict anyone - in another comment I note that these situations are often unclear, and many very well-intentioned people may not even realize they are harming or undermining someone (and they probably think highly of that person, too!). To be honest, my primary impetus was to explain why a comment like this is actually sexist (there seemed to be some disagreement on that part) and why it is harmful. It's not always intuitive, since we often describe our friends as "attractive" or "sexy" without a second thought in a friendly/social context.

I'm not trying to say that the introducer was sexist - the behavior was.

Edit: From the downvotes, it seems that there is disagreement here - which part do people take issue with?

If we are talking about whether or not sexism occurred, then it does not in fact matter what someone said before or after they said something sexist.

It does not matter with regard to the assessment of his remarks as sexist, but it does matter with regard to his perceived attitude towards women and how that perception will impact his reputation. The author was right to call this guy out for his sexist comments, but it was not right for him to omit 50% of the transcript that shows this guy is actually a human being and not the paragon of male sexism and misogyny.

In short: Context. You might want to pretend it doesn't matter, but it does.

Sheesh. You'd think coders (of which we have many here) would understand the importance of context! ;)

I thought this discussion was about sexism in tech - what kind of comments are sexist and why that matters - not about convicting or even trying a particular individual in the court of public opinion.

Of course it matters to his reputation, but by definition if we're talking about the larger question of sexism in the industry, it doesn't seem relevant to me. In fact, I think it serves to excuse or ignore the question of sexism that was raised.

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