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Comment by thelastpoet | Hacker News Reader

"But like the girl who wears a padded bra, there’s some serious misleading going on there."

Was this really necessary?

No. Neither was the obfuscated swear word in the title. Nor the word 'screw'. Nor was the picture at the top of the article or the pink headings. Or the call to action below. Nor the chatty writing style. Very little of the article was necessary, but it is what it is.

You can draw the line anywhere, really, and the author chose to draw it there. If the author of every article self-censors and goes out of its way not to offend anyone at all then we're going to end up with a very boring world.

It's a good thing to have your sensibilities challenged.

Yes, but it's equally important to have good sensibilities.

Sorry, where's the sensibility handbook? I assume from your comment that there's a standard that needs to be adhered to?

That assumption is unsupported, though.

Sorry, there's no handbook. You just have to go through life doing your best, occasionally there's a little misunderstanding and there's a witch-hunt and you're subjected to mass-Internet-bullying until you apologise for your little mistake, whether or not it was your fault. Together society moves forward to non-exclusionary monoculture where there is no risky language, however borderline or insignificant, and offenders are switftly dealt with.

For every joke there is a minority that it excludes.

Alternatively, people are thoughtful about what they write and equally thoughtful about their standards of evidence and credibility when they call people out on things. People stop and think before bullying each other in the name of equality and try to exercise empathy for everyone.

But sadly I don't think the human brain is wired for that.

(Yes I'm still annoyed about Noordhuis and incredulous about how vindictive and hateful some people can be.)

I'm generally what one would classify as a white-knighting witch-hunter who thinks that you should keep your "risky" language and humor out of professional contexts (for basically the same reason you shouldn't smoke cigarettes in professional offices, I shouldn't have to breathe that shit while I'm working) but I just upvoted you because you're making an excellent point about exercising empathy for everyone.

Here's the thing. So am I. I would say I am very egalitarian and very empathetic. I would say I am a feminist, which is perhaps why I find certain behaviour on the Internet under the banner of feminism troubling.

I recognise that mob-precursor-feeling rising in me occasionally (often when I see footage of policemen attacking civilians unprovoked) but, I think, it's up to us all to behave as civilised human beings, and that includes not joining the mob, seeking to empathise with both parties and actually looking for the evidence.

For this reason I find mob mentality and zero tolerance behaviour deeply troubling and try to engage in conversation whenever I see it.

This is a corporate blog so you could say it comes under the 'professional' umbrella. If you're going to criticise it, you could say that the general tone of the article isn't particularly professional, but, as I said in another comment, there was plenty more to find problems with than just the mention of a padded bra. I happen to think the blog post was fine, probably because the Internet has brought personal and professional universes incredibly close.

I understand if others disagree, for disagreement to be respected it has to come intellectual honesty (i.e. evidence of critical thought) rather than as a reflex.

I don't disagree with your initial point. However, it carries the rhetorical premise that simply because we find something offensive we should question our sensibilities rather than note when we feel other folks are being sexist.

To an extent, I agree with that as well, though it's possible you're not intending that premise within your statement.

But ultimately, we have sensibilities, and while we should question them it's not universally the case that our sensibilities are wrongheaded, and personally, I think the padded bra comment is a good example of that kind of thing which, even upon reflection, I have little trouble saying that folks who write like that are employing a sexist trope.

I think that we should all strive both not to be offensive and not to be easily offended. Just as importantly, we can call out stupid sexist tropes (or inadvertent exclusionary language) without demonizing those who write them.

> If the author of every article self-censors and goes out of its way not to offend anyone at all then we're going to end up with a very boring world.

Frankly, I really doubt it would happen. Moreover that article wasn't entertaining ; it lacks subtleties for that.

Interesting analogy from the author, considering she's also a woman. A poor attempt to force their point across by being hyperbole.

It's a stunt metaphor and just plain crappy writing. Women can be crappy writers too.

It was an analogy. Lighten up.

It's a misogynous analogy. If we call it out we can make the world a better place, where everyone is actually equal and break the horrible let's-pretend-we're-equal-while-holding-some-people-down status quo. Everyone's a winner. Except misogynists.

Hear hear. But you're not doing it properly. Please be consistent.

"what about being human when it matters most? In person" - doesn't this exclude people with social anxiety disorders?

"mix of knock-off stilettos" - doesn't this exclude people who wear flats?

"people bumbling about who looks a hair too much like Dwight Schrute" - doesn't this exclude people who do look like him and may have body image issues?

"You have just entered the land of networking hell" - this imagery is deeply offensive to some religions

"Screw the schmoozing" - using sexual imagery? No thanks.

"The people who hand out business cards like they are condoms in a high school sex ed. class" - alienates those with a conservative upbringing

"Disclaimer – keep those condoms, kids" - again, pretty offensive to Catholics

"They want meaningful relationships" - again social anxiety

"And people respond to kindness." - not everyone. Exclusionary to those on certain parts of the autistic spectrum.

"The same philosophy goes for networking" - I can imagine quite a few real philosophers getting offended about the belittling of their profession

"One good conversation is better than five quick ones every day of the week" - not the Shabbat!

"It’s for people who will never be more than middlemen" - think of all the middlemen out there, feeling excluded at this hate speech and switching off

"when you remember to be human" - deeply insulting to robots

Ah yes, the wonderful binary world of computer people where nuances only come in the form of 0 or 1.

Sorry, I should have put a <rhetoricalIllustration> tag around that to clarify that I don't actually believe any of the above. (Do I really need to say that?). I won't spell it out again, I've made other comments in this thread.

"where everyone is actually equal"

The point of the article was making fun of a small subgroup of humanity who like meatspace networking events in a format similar to cosmo-style psuedo-risque dating advice. And some folks don't like his use of an analogy of exhibitionistic-ish women. The problem is if you stick to a dating advice theme, what analogy would you prefer? White men can't jump would be much more politically correct because they're a politically safe target, but doesn't fit the theme at all. Also the theme of "lets make fun of suboptimal behavior of a subgroup" is completely incompatible with your proposed "lets pretend we're equal" theme, so the article not fitting your criteria is the opposite of a fail, under the defined theme and purpose of this individual article, however good it might be as general life advice.

So either its a great analogy for this specific text, or its a horrible text so the specifics of the analogies and other details don't matter. But it can't be both at the same time such as a bad analogy.

In this case, it's likely worth pointing out that the author is female.

Definitely. Misogyny is thrown around so much now that it's getting a bit absurd. She made a quip about push up bras => MISOGYNY! If I made a quip about dudes padding their underwear, what would that be?

And I've always thought of misogyny to mean the hate/dislike of women; in other words, a perpetual and sustained belief, but these days it seems to be attributed to singular insults/moments of disrespect. The two are related, and hate may imply disrespect but a moment of disrespect does not imply hate.

Women can and do use misogynistic, inappropriate, and unprofessional language, too. The "was that really necessary?" question is still perfectly valid to ask even when the author is female.

It was a bad analogy WRT not using technology, its a fail as I believe the push up is considerably higher tech than the padded, or at least a more respectable mechanical engineering challenge. It is a perfectly good analogy as an example of not using mere larger numbers as a success metric and not trying to maximize shallowness of interaction as a success metric. So about 90% correct but specific word choice was not ideal.

That and the commentary on condoms made it look like he was aiming for a dating scene series of analogies and changed his mind half way thru without completely changing the tone of the article. It does appear to have started as a post about dating advice and morphed into a networking post. #1 is about one night stands, #2 is about putting notches on the bedpost, #3 is a bit of personal bias about not liking adult toys or group activities, which is his loss. This analogy also makes the self-selection bias assumption that is probably wrong, in that most of the people participating are either exhibitionists or those who enjoy taking a harmless look at exhibitionists, and most definitely are not a self selected crowd interested in church approved premarital counseling and abstinence only young adult education, so pushing those unpopular outlooks is unlikely to interest the audience. In both the article or my dating analogy of the article.

Why do you assume the author is a man?

Because I'm too lazy to hit the about button and find out its an all female site (which it is), one english language gendered pronoun has one less letter than the other and I'm lazy, in this particular situation scattering some "s" doesn't change the content of the discussion in any productive way, and gendered pronouns as a concept is a fairly stupid language design decision and one way to demonstrate disrespect for a stupid idea is to ignore a stupid idea's ridiculous rules.

If our shared language was poorly designed enough to have racially segregated pronouns as opposed to gender segregated pronouns (don't laugh, its an almost equally stupid design decision) I'd probably call you all martians out of disrespect to a dumb design decision not because you're all actually from mars.

Its not because the website authors profile pics make them look manlier than myself or I admire their beards or anything dumb like that.

TLDR: Doesn't mean much.

> I'd probably call you all martians out of disrespect to a dumb design decision

Nope, the equivalent what you did is use the "white pronoun" for a black person.

As a sophistry technique to avoid discussion of the actual issue, focus on irrelevant detail works pretty well.

Yeah sorry it's not that important. I suppose I was more sensitive to it because the discussion was derailed into misogyny (which derailing I participate in).

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