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Comment by TillE | Hacker News Reader

"Microaggression" is the accepted term for all those things that are totally not a big deal and why can't you take a joke.

Very useful concept, particularly if you're not someone who has to suffer them daily and can't understand why one individual little incident is still an issue.

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I've experienced things from women in the workplace that would have resulted in instant termination had she been a man. But men have a higher threshold for not complaining about shit that doesn't matter.

So have I - I've had a morbidly obese Nurse Unit Manager with the hots for me come in and lean all over me - heavy and annoying. My female tech lead volunteered to provide evidence for a sexual harassment complaint if I wanted to. (I'm male, the NUM was female)

I didn't want to. The NUM came in maybe three times a year, for only a couple of minutes. It was just a passing discomfort, but the important thing is this: I never lost tangible power. I didn't work in an environment where it was commonplace. I never felt like I couldn't escape or verbally correct or even physically overpower her if things went too far. There was never a culture of undermining my power that it contributed to. I wasn't seen as more of a 'junior' because of it; it didn't diminish my status.

Separate to that, I wouldn't say men have a higher threshold for not complaining about shit that doesn't matter. In some senses they do, and in others they don't - the recent PyCon event showed vast amounts of men in tech providing plenty of vapid, shrill complaints over stuff that really didn't require that level of passion.

> I've experienced things from women in the workplace that would have resulted in instant termination had she been a man.

I have too, but it's nowhere near as bad as what women I know tell me they deal with.

> But men have a higher threshold for not complaining about shit that doesn't matter.

This is sexist.

To clarify: You mean "why you can't take a joke" as an ironc reference, or as a factual statement?

When an isolate microaggression is brought to light, the aggressor (or the supporters of the aggressor) usually respond with "why can't you take a joke?" or the infamous "now, I'm a big supporter of [diversity, feminism, equal rights], but this one situation is really not a big deal."

In a given situation, who decides who the "aggressor" is? You're throwing that word around as though it's always a given.

A big part of the difficulty, is that this is the stuff that goes on once bigotry has been pushed down to the subliminal level. Once there is little overt bigotry, then further progress is through accomplishment.

There is no sharp demarcation, of course. The tech industry is perhaps still not quite at the "everything is subliminal" point.

And yes, a part of the human condition, is that everything is subverted and abused or misapplied, sometime. Because...humans. We're messy.

Seriously? In the situations where people talk about microaggressions, it's one party acting in a certain way toward someone from an oppressed class that subtly devalues them in a way that ties into the oppression of that class. Out of context, one may see it as "not a big deal", but in the broader context of that class's oppression, and the frequency with which people of the oppressed class may experience microaggressions, it is a big deal.

In that case, there is one clear party who is being (subtly) aggressive.

Seriously.

Situations are rarely black and white.

It is uncivilized to always assume that the person taking offense is automatically correct. We're all people, and people are capable of dishonestly taking advantage of the sympathies of the mob du jour.

It is always okay to discuss whether someone is actually guilty, and it is always okay to discuss whether someone is actually making false accusations.

I agree. Let me also add that it's often good policy to assume we're all basically decent people, and any problems are due to mistakes or incomplete knowledge. At least at first. Innocent until proven guilty.

The post isn't short on examples.

Generally, in modern social justice circles, the more privileged person is considered the aggressor and the less privileged person is considered the victim.

If a person is targeted by multiple "isms" then they can be the victim of people targeted by fewer "isms".

However, it is not possible for a privileged person to be the aggressor in a conflict with a less privileged person.

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