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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

Randi Harper should be ashamed of herself for equating "reading words on the Internet" with being in an actual abusive relationship.

There is a huge difference between intimate partner violence and not liking the text on webpages you choose to load on your computer.

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People published her info online, she received phone calls to her house, they called her employer and got her fired, her emails were hacked and posted online.

Just recently she tweeted that she was called into a meeting at her current job because trolls upset with the ggautoblocker list had been calling her current employer to try and get her fired.

But it's all just words on the internet, right?

She got harassed IRL, that exceeds 'not liking the text on webpages' by a considerable margin.

Domestic abuse can be emotional abuse, which certainly carries over to text communications. Especially if they include death threats.

Not all abuse is physical. Verbal abuse is just as serious, if not moreso. The famous phrase "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is really backwards. In truth, words can hurt far more than sticks and stones ever can.

I disagree. 1. It's her experience, and she can equate those two experiences if she feels they should be. 2. Her experience with 'reading words on the internet' is indicative of a much wider culture of harassment against women. This cultural issue, because it contributes to the dearth of women in tech, is a societal issue in the same way that domestic abuse is.

It's a metaphor.

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