Comment by _bfhp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _bfhp | Hacker News Reader

The extreme attention applied to all these stories arises out of the need of men in tech and finance to document the proof that women are liars and tricksters -- that these legal cases are all individual anecdotes doesn't matter.

You can always tell when a headline on HN is about a woman in a gender discrimination situation, usually on the "losing" end, i.e. "look at what the Women's Libbers have created, these demon women who will use PC feminism to sue and get as much money out of some poor company as they can, even when it's been proven they are wrong". It's always a very vague headline, because all of the men whose eyes are on the story already know all the details, as it is with all of these "high-profile court cases". The implicit draw of these stories, at the heart, is "she thought she was a victim and she was wrong".

If you want a more honest illustration of the reason why this story is being so focused on, look at the Ars Technica comment section.

Do you have any examples of women winning (or losing) discrimination case that get covered on tech sites like Arstechnica? ... tech sites that have articles frequently on the frontpage of HN.

If you're trying to establish a pattern, I'd be curious to see other examples? This seems pretty atypical and quite an interesting story by itself. Big silicon valley VC firms aren't often in high-publicity law suits.

The extreme attention applied to discrimination, harassment, and civil rights issues in the US is a cultural phenomenon that goes far beyond women in tech.

You deliberately simplify my assertions into other ones to make them seem irrelevant or obvious. This is intellectual dishonesty in service of mitigating the perceived threat of another's point, rather than engaging with it.

Since you open with an inflammatory ad hominem attack and never really move beyond it I'm not sure how much you get to talk about civil discourse.

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

"Ad hominem" has a specific definition -- in what way does it apply to any of what I have written? Do you use a non-standard definition?

I provided a link to the definition I'm using.

Graham describes the situation of an argument being disagreed with. Whose argument am I disagreeing with?

I was just pointing out something for you to consider.

Alleging that men in tech (all of us?) need "to document the proof that women are liars and tricksters" and that the implicit draw of these stories, at the heart, is "she thought she was a victim and she was wrong" is simply misandrist stereotyping.

You cited the attention given to these issues as evidence; I think you should consider that this attention is not unique to women in tech, and is also exactly what feminist activists want. The coverage (and the jury decisions) aren't always in their favor because people are diverse.

Beyond your prejudices I think you'll find that there are men who feel the way you describe, and men who are staunchly feminist, and a lot of men who realize women are diverse: heroes, victims, productive workers, and yes, sometimes, "money-grubbing exploiters of worthy causes."

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