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Comment by aheilbut | Hacker News Reader

I'm hearing a tiny, sad violin.

And I'm seeing the problem with the tech industry's attitude towards women illustrated in your comment, not to mention that it's actually just one excerpt from an upcoming book (disclosed down the bottom of the article).

Seems like a pretty straightforward account. Neither condemning not lauding.

Indeed, and because of that I was rather confused. Was there a point to the article other than to give an account to her experience? Maybe I'm just too used to reading articles with obvious bias.

> Was there a point to the article other than to give an account to her experience?

Depending on your level of cynicism you could consider the article an "advertorial" seeing as how these are few anecdotes from her book coming out next week.

god. jesus. NO. you've already set the course for the "here comes another HN thread where people act/get pissy" thread, so we might as well. Here goes: You probably can't imagine what it's like

- for a female employee to be aggressively pursued by a supervisor for a sexual act, nor can you fathom

- the powerlessness of being one of those women who have all noticed this behavior and, worse,

- knowing that they can't do anything about it.

Nor, as your comment indicatese ... should anyone think it's important.

Some people might consider this worth discussion, even if they think that the issue's overblown (either this instance or generally 'women in tech'), but not you.

No, instead, you thought it would be fucking clever to do perhaps the stupidest, tritest 2003-era joke to convey your callous - in response to a pretty even-handed account, no less. It's beyond saving to be upset about the stupid shit which runs through this site, but what I am having trouble with is trying to decipher what the fucking point of your comment here is. Does mine have one either? Not really; guilty as charged. In any case - your stupid response deserves at least mine in kind, and probably also the revulsion of anyone who thinks things this-article-related should matter.

And, fuck, a tiny violin joke? Really? That's the icing on the human-shitstain cake.

Edited for emphasis, I am sorry that my infuriation has distracted you by way of cursing. But not apologizing for total derision - I'll stand by conveying how _completely fucked up_ this is. Let's take this seriously.

Hm. I'm willing to bet your response would have been taken more seriously than his (hint: it wasn't) if you hadn't taken his tone and reduced it to the point of swearing so much.

If it is such an important issue, perhaps treat it a bit more professionally.

"Professional" comes across as dispassionate on the internet (and often face-to-face as well). Swearing is one way to express emotion in text.

Coming across as irate and unbalanced, which the author's swearing did in this instance, does nothing but detract from his / her point.

You can be assertive and "professional" without sounding like a shriek.

I agree. The original post was a trite little comment that a) didn't match the tone of the book excerpt (which seemed pretty evenhanded) and b) was illustrative of the exact attitudes that can make women in tech feel marginalized.

The only acceptable response is to forcefully smack it down. I thought pnmahoney's reply was exactly the right tone.

This is a pure tone argument that is completely useless to this discourse here. The comment brings up a point that everyone has been ignoring, the fact that most of us will be discussing this from a position of privilege, and most of us do not have first hand experience of being in a workplace which has a culture that does not favour your gender. Dismissing his argument for the inclusion of profanity is rude, stupid and incredibly condescending.

Taking this article seriously would seem to necessitate dismissing it.

I understand your viewpoint here, because that's more or less how I interpreted the article on my first read through. However, you likely misinterpreted the article. See pnmahoney's response to my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4150139 (and try to ignore that it's the same pnmahoney who responded angrily to your comment :)

Oh hey, I think you're missing a crucial part here (again :)

"I'm having trouble reading this one . . . can someone else help me?" is NOT-equivalent to "I am so closed to this issue that I'd rather demean the point, let's make the industry look bad AND lame. here ya go. <idiotic joke>."

...or at least there is a conceivable difference between the second and the first BESIDES just the idiotic joke. That said, I don't mean to imply that you can't actually mean the latter and dress it up as the former.

I really did interpret it in the same way as aheilbut initially (i.e., I initially thought that the author was just whining). However, I realized I was probably missing something, so I decided to ask. Fortunately for me, you came along and explained it!

I don't think that aheilbut was necessarily closed to the issue. If I had to guess, he was probably just distracted by the presentation, like I was.

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