Comment by jamesaguilar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jamesaguilar | Hacker News Reader

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Re: your point 2. There is a huuuuuuge difference between women dressed in the clothes being marketed sending the message, "You could look like this," to other women, and women placed on pedestals like the product being marketed sending the message, "Buying this hard drive is like buying hot sexy naked me," to a group mainly comprised of men. Huuuuge difference.

Maybe the former is not completely kosher, but the degree is so different that it makes zero sense to accuse someone of not calling out double standards when they mention the one and not the other. Also, it is really silly to tell activists that they aren't allowed to bother you until they have sufficiently bothered everyone else to your satisfaction. Basically all you've done is ask them to go away. It is morally equivalent to saying that people are not allowed to worry about healthcare or the homeless in their own country until the Africa problem is fixed. It's dumb.

Also, plenty of feminists are complaining about the representation of women in fashion. So on top of being bad rhetoric, your objection is wrong on the facts.

> I love women and I have a lot of female (and male) friends

If there was a website called "x-ist-tropes.com", "I have X friends, my mom is an X" would be the #1 trope for almost any value of X. Just don't say it.

I can write about sexism in female-dominated industries all day, and there are most certainly sexists pigs of all stripes and all genders. The fact is that the tech industry is a super-easy target for people to jump on, and this is wrong on so many levels it is barely worth writing about anymore. I could write long screeds about being a male in marketing and other industries, but what does it accomplish but upping my view-count?

Honestly, I'm not sure what the Africa thing is about.

> Honestly, I'm not sure what the Africa thing is about.

There is an argument that people make that you're not allowed to complain about first world problems (for example, the NDAA) until we've fixed things like world hunger.

Conversely, how come America feels like it can fix the world's problems when it has so many of its own that it can't fix?

> what does it accomplish but upping my view-count?

Same thing any form of political writing accomplishes. It tries to convince the audience to change their view.

> Honestly, I'm not sure what the Africa thing is about.

To paraphrase your original comment, "you shouldn't talk about this problem, because that problem isn't fixed." This maps well onto the an argument I've heard that "you shouldn't worry about homeless people in America while so many are starving in Africa."

> The fact is that the tech industry is a super-easy target for people to jump on, and this is wrong on so many levels it is barely worth writing about anymore.

Yeah, let's just stay silent and the problem will fix itself.

I'm worried that saying "there's a trope for this" is now becoming a trope. "It's a trope" isn't anywhere near as good an argument as "what you just said is really dumb and here's why".

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