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Comment by almightygod | Hacker News Reader

This whole incident is sad. It's incredibly sad for Julie, for everyone at GitHub, for the founders, and for the alleged "crazy" founder wife who was banned from a company she probably sacrificed a lot for

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Sacrifice does not buy one a free pass to treat people like shit. Condescension is not an award. (otherwise I agree with your sentiment and post)

I'm surprised nobody sees sexism in the way that the wife has been stigmatized.

I think it would be somewhat different if she were an actual employee.

So it's not sexism as long as it is against a non-employee? What kind of sense does that make?

One way or another, an employee has to be part of the workplace - it's their job. An non-employee doesn't have to be there, so access to the workplace is a privilege (and one that not all employers permit). When a non-employee misuses that privilege (e.g. by getting the the way of employees doing their work), it can and should be revoked.

Moreover, making mistakes in the context of misusing a privilege can and should carry greater stigma than making those same mistakes in some other contexts.

I think that the wife's actions would have been even less acceptable if she were male. The stigma is caused by the repeated unprofessional actions she did, and made worse by the fact that she was not even an employee.

Why should gender affect the acceptability of one's behavior?

Because sexism.

Agreed. Perhaps it was meant the the actions would be seen as less acceptable.

The stigma is caused by the repeated unprofessional actions she did,

Allegedly did.

I think the stigma is based on alleged bad behaviour. As this behaviour has nothing to do with gender I don't think it's accurate to say this is sexism. I could be wrong.

So... you don't see sexism in the way she behaved?

I don't see the sexism here. If you changed her sex to male, people would be just as negative on him/her. A spouse who is not an employee, swinging their proverbial dick around (no pun intended), meddling with the company's employees, and harassing them?

I think people would hate the spouse just the same if it were a man, so I disagree with you on this.

> I'm surprised nobody sees sexism in the way that the wife has been stigmatized.

Y'know, I hope I'm wrong, but there's a good chance you're surprised because you don't know what sexism is. An awful lot of men seem to have this notion that "sexism" means "something happened to a woman that she didn't like." It doesn't. Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on a person's sex or gender, if you'll forgive me quoting Wikipedia. Calling out a woman for doing something shitty is not sexist. Saying "well, what can you expect from a woman" would be.

No one cares what her gender is. She doesn't work for GitHub, yet she believed that she had hiring and firing power at GitHub and had the ability to read private chat logs. That is wrong, and she doesn't belong near the company anymore. It would be the same if she were male.

At least express your opinion with this statement instead of just leaving a questionable open ended statement.

Do I see any sexism against the wife of the co-founder from GitHub's statement? No

If you'd like to continue the discussion then go ahead and provide something of worth.

This comment is ironic I know, but these kind of posts derail the debate.

The situation would be equally bad if it were a male founder's gay lover or husband.

Nothing to do with sexism, everything to do with a person making decisions for the company who is (1) personally close to an executive and (2) without a formal role at the company.

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