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Comment by pdabbadabba | Hacker News Reader

No coincidence that this was written, apparently, by a youngish white male. This sounds like an effort to impose a code of conduct that only restricts the sort of conduct that frequently bothers him (being accused of having violated social norms that he does not find important--probably because they do not benefit him), while consciously deciding not to address the challenges that face other people online.

He's free to run a community in that way, but I won't be joining it.

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I was amused that he defended himself by pointing out that he helps design software for a gay community. Okay, but does that really make you a minority in any way? Regardless of whether privilege is an issue in this discussion, the logic doesn't really flow here.

Yeah, it's almost like intersectionality is a thing.

Intersectionality would come into play if he was arguing that he was a member of multiple minority groups. Here he was arguing that he was a contributor (not necessarily a member!) of a single group, distinct from the previously discussed ones. It's entirely possible he's a member of multiple groups, my point was just that his argument didn't reference that and it was therefore illogical.

Yup. It's annoying to hear that I should stop whining because the internet is fine, when he almost doesn't experience oppression in the same way.

I'm... actually not clear on what you're saying. Are you being sarcastic or serious? I can't read your tone and I could imagine realistic scenarios where you're saying one thing or the other.

My bad - I was being sarcastic about the first comment, not sarcastic about the second (and agreeing with you).

To more fully explain what I meant by my first response, I was frustrated by his lack of awareness of the ways intersectionality impacts how different people interact with each other online. Codes of Conduct become increasingly important as one recognizes that intersectionalities of oppression can create extremely toxic situations for some minority groups and not others, depending on the context of the group. So, basically what you were saying in your second comment.

You sound pretty knowledgable about intersectionality. Do you have any material on it? I'm only familiar with it from one blog post, so I wouldn't mind learning some more. It sounds like there are more nuances to it than I first understood.

Thanks! Honestly, I would start with the wikipedia article about it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality). It's a nice intro and has a lot of great links.

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