Comment by ianschenck | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ianschenck | Hacker News Reader

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I still don't see how "large dongle" is sexist.

I'm glad you take the time to re-educate those around you. It's probably the hardest thing to do, but ultimately the best way forward for everyone. Maybe I'm overly optimistic on the ability of education though.

What I find really suspect is her feeling like and calling herself a hero. Her reference to herself as "Joan of Arc". Also going public immediately.

I have been, more than once in my previous career, in a situation where a female engineer was actually in a real, abusive situation. I handled these situations "by the book". At one point I was asked by HR if I wanted to know the outcome. Of course I said "NO, but please let me know when she is doing better." I can't imagine feeling like a "hero". These were absolutely terrible experiences for me. I never sought out back slapping. I did seek out re-assurance from my father (also one of these god-awful male engineer chauvinistic pigs), and he was supportive. I can't even imagine going public with something like this. Something just strikes me as completely wrong.

And if you're going to complain about offensive public comments, don't post publicly offensive pictures with racial overtones. Sorry, it is relevant. It demonstrates a double standard.

It creates a sexualized environment, here's a good article:

http://geekfeminism.org/2012/10/01/when-sex-and-porn-are-on-...

It's hard to understand the "hero" feeling unless you've been quiet and avoided speaking out on similar (and often bigger) events. It feels good to stand up for your fellow females and community, even if you get negative public attention for it. I think more things big and small should be addressed so that it never leads to a "real" abusive environment again (As an aside, you don't get to decide what is a "real, abusive situation").

Who decides what's the real abusive situation? I suspect the victim. It's not possible for a third person to objectively know, it can only be guessed in which case some kind of "decision" is necessary. Sorry, but what is a bystander to do? You are upset because he decided something was abusive and acted. I guess you would be happier with inaction? I don't understand.

Who says I am upset?

I wasn't making any comment or judgment on his action or inaction in a particular past situation. If he helped someone fight abuse, I'm all for that!

My aside was about the danger and power of bystanders picking and choosing what is real abuse. In this case it was obvious that something needed to be done. Great.

However, if it isn't obvious or seems insignificant to a bystander, that doesn't make it less real for the victim. There was an implied judgment that this situation couldn't constitute "real abuse."

Hey, sorry. I didn't mean to write "real, abusive situation". I meant "really abusive situation", as in "very abusive situation". It appears I cannot correct it. I was tired.

Having a discussion with folks like you requires tiring surgical precision with rhetoric. It's interesting that given the two possible interpretations, you picked the most offensive. You should be careful with that - not everyone out there is oblivious and unsympathetic to the problems facing women and underlying currents of a male-dominated society.

I'm glad you consider yourself an ally to the cause of women in tech.

However, your claim of my looking for offense is incorrect. My comment was an aside, a point for reflection on the power of naming something as important or not.

Any internet communication requires surgical rhetoric. The English language has a myriad of ways to express things and it's not always clear what is meant when communications lack human interaction (e.g. tone of voice, body language).

It is tiring to translate thoughts, experiences, and feelings into a digestible and understandable format.

> It is tiring to translate thoughts, experiences, and feelings into a digestible and understandable format.

This is a very telling statement-- it's also somewhat ironic, given that one could easily interpret this as a passive aggressive jab at OP's "inability" to communicate. One could ALSO interpret this as a general sentiment about the importance of vocabulary. So either you did not communicate this point precisely enough, or you intentionally left it vague as some intelligent ploy to poke at the flaws in your own argument. I'll go with the latter cause it sounds more meta.

The actual issue is that it isn't about difficulty. It's actually impossible to translate thoughts in a predictable manner across racial, gender, and cultural lines. We are not machines, and so people interpret statements, and, in some cases, jokes, in the way that they are brought up to interpret them. In a victim-culture, jokes are usually interpreted as malicious devices. The problem here is that while some call for equality and understanding of other cultures/genders/races, this usually only applies to the cultures that are victimized. Equality is a two-way street, and understanding semantics is an important step to equality, because in order to respect, you must first understand. Just because culture/gender X makes a dongle joke, does not mean that culture/gender X meant the dongle joke as some insult to culture/gender Y, even though culture/gender Y might interpret it that way. We (all) have to put effort to understand things in the right contexts, so a dick joke between two guys (with no assumption that women are eavesdropping) is just that-- a dick joke between two guys-- it is not an assault on women (especially given the fact that it seems like it wasn't even meant to be heard by anybody else). Some leeway ought to be given to the interpretation of words, just as you should be reading the OP's text as it was intended, not simply as the words aligned on the page.

That said, I actually love how this very statement ties back to the original issue at hand so perfectly, even though it was some tangential argument about semantics, so thank you for pointing this out.

Tits in slides make a sexist environments. Blonde jokes make sexist environments. Groping makes sexist environments. Light innuendo does not create sexist environments.

This woman publicly humiliated someone and lost them their job for doing absolutely nothing wrong. That is fucked up.

(nit-pick) There's a difference between sexist and sexualized.

FWIW, I'm not sure where I fall on all of this – but my hunch says there's a bunch to be unhappy about all around. Having said that, I'll throw this out:

In my experience, men (I am one) tend to be more okay with a small amount of sexualization in conversation. Women tend not to be. (extreme generalization, but a real distinction, I believe).

Say what you will about which is right or wrong, but I think that the important point is the general difference between the way men and women see things. That difference is real, regardless what any one of us would want one side or the other to be.

So, the question becomes, how do we deal with it and how do we minimize conflict?

I believe your observation is correct. I'll also throw out a possible reason for women being less okay with sexualisation in conversation: We're the target or object of sexualisation far more often than men are, and sometimes in quite threatening contexts. If you keep getting exposed to something in a negative context, you stop liking even fairly mild occurrences of it. (I'm sure a black person hearing even quite mildly racist jokes will be more annoyed than a white person would, because they are usually the target of these jokes.)

"I'll also throw out a possible reason for women being less okay with sexualisation in conversation: We're the target or object of sexualisation far more often than men are"

Okay, but how does this apply to a "dongle" joke? If the joke referred to female anatomy rather than male, would it have been more offensive or less (to someone in Adria's position)?

I dunno if you're right about the difference between men and women. I do know that there's a difference between a professional and a non-professional environment. If you're talking about sexy stuff in a professional environment where you don't really know all the people within earshot, at the very least you're exhibiting some fairly poor judgment. And, at worst, you might be making some of the strangers around you very uncomfortable.

Nah fuck that I'm going to treat men and women exactly the same.

This is one of the most misogynistic posts I have seen in a long time. It declares -Woman are delicate, and the mere hint of bawdy humor will cause them to faint dead away. -Woman are weaklings, who need to be supported in their fears. Both of these are BS. These are excuses people used in the 70s to keep women out of the workforce. This whole incident will make life worse for everyone involved.

I can sympathize that creating a hostile environment can be damaging and should be addressed. However, she was listening to a private conversation. These weren't the speakers, they weren't addressing large crowds, they weren't even making jokes publicly online. They were two friends talking amongst themselves.

Which still wouldn't be acceptable, except they weren't actually saying anything offensive per se. Your charge is that they're creating an environment where women feel unwelcome, one in which they feel uncomfortable because it is implied that the audience is male (I'm assuming you agree with the article you linked). But the thing is, the entire audience was composed of males because the entire audience was limited to the one person each man was talking to. It's impossible to make the claim that they're alienating people by creating an implied homogeneous culture when they're speaking privately.

Think about a comparable situation. If a man is reading in a break room with two women talking to each other about how periods suck, are they alienating him? Are they creating an environment in which in which one has to be a biologically typical female under the age of 45 to feel accepted? Or are they just talking about issues which affect them and not worrying about who might be eavesdropping? It should be obvious that it is the latter. The case in which Adria is involved is no different. "Addressing" the situation as she did does nothing but create a polarized, vitriolic atmosphere and makes people less likely to get involved when there actually is real sexism present.

IMHO this is BS. I'm GLBT and I'm 100% cool with nice looking ladies on slides. People don't read me as heterosexual male (not even close), but just because I'm not one, doesn't mean that I can't have the same interests. I feel sort of invisible when people forward these arguments, because it really is actually possible for people other than men to like ladies. (and vice versa, with ladies being not the only persons to like men)

Admittedly, you don't want to actually show porn or something. That'd be unprofessional. But I don't think attraction to ladies (which is probably a majority interest in the predominantly male tech crowd) ought to be some sort of heavily taboo subject just to protect female feelings. Tech people also tend to like things like video games and comics, should we not mention those either? There are plenty of women who like those things, even if they're traditionally a "male" hobby.

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