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Comment by 13thLetter | Hacker News Reader

No. Even if she has been victimized, that does not give her the right to engage in sustained harassment and blacklisting campaigns against third parties. If she is suffering from such terrible PTSD that she cannot keep herself from lashing out at undeserving victims, I feel for her but she needs psychiatric care, not enabling comments such as we are seeing on this post.

Incidentally, the original definition of the word "privilege" is "private law." I'll leave that to others to decide how that applies to granting one person the permission to engage in the same harassing behaviors she wants others punished for.

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I never said that it "gave her the right" to do anything. I said that it did not negate the bad things that happened to her. I said that we should not ignore the very serious and legitimate issues she raises because she's gotten very angry at people.

And here's the fundamental issue I see in all of these debates: the majority (here, young white males) tries to invalidate completely legitimate concerns because the person raising those legitimate concerns has done things that one can criticize.

You can see this rampantly in links that are provided to somehow negate her claim. "She's not a real contributor to FreeBSD, so her claims are invalid." "She gets angry at people, so her claims are invalid."

Look, Rodney King was not innocent of all crimes when he was badly beaten by the LAPD. Does that excuse those cops? Of course not. The only germane "counter-evidence" to Randi's post would be evidence that the FreeBSD has actually be incredibly and consistently welcoming to her. Because fundamentally her claim is that the FreeBSD community has been decidedly unwelcome to her. And yet all the "counter-arguments" here are repeated and painful reminders of how nasty and awful the "counter-arguers" are to her. It's mind-boggling.

What exactly "did people do to her"?

Vivek Wadhwa wrote a book that she didn't like and upon being "criticized" even offered a free copy of it, she declined and told him to go die in a fire.

Anne Rice called attention to an article about this and she was declared a "bully" and a "harasser".

Ted Neward never had any conversations with her when she asked for him to be "driven out of the industry" and Iris Classon pleaded to be left alone because Randi was trying to use her for her own purposes.

Roberto Rosario was put on a "list of harassers" by her because he followed the "wrong kind of people" on Twitter and got subsequently harassed and she tried to get him removed from speaking at conferences.

These people ARE HER VICTIMS, not the other way around. She initiates these things. Similar with the FreeBSD community, this is the first time Johannes Meixner has ever talked to her, his supposed wrongdoing previously was that he criticized "safe spaces" and "Code of Conducts" saying that he agrees with this: https://github.com/domgetter/NCoC

https://twitter.com/xmjEE/status/613083223086768128

Again she attacked him privately telling him to "go fuck himself", that he is a "piece of shit", a "privileged dumbass" and that he is supposedly "giving the project a bad name" while all he did was remaining calm and saying that he has different opinions: https://archive.is/9KGyX

He called this behaviour out after said Code of Conduct was implemented and the Foundation didn't choose to do anything in his favor, this is why he left: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.freebsd.advocacy/5404/

Randi is just trying to change cause and effect. Nobody was "beaten by the police" in this case and most of these people didn't even know of her existence before. SHE is the harasser/abuser in most of these situations, if you have any proof pointing out otherwise, please feel free to share.

The proof is in your hostile attitude toward her.

Her post is about how she felt profoundly unwelcome in the FreeBSD community. Your response is not a counter-argument to her feeling unwelcome. As far as I can tell, your response is, "Randi did bad things." That's a non-sequitur. It's not a response to her feelings of being made to feel unwelcome.

If you had a germane response, I am guessing it would be, "Randi should feel unwelcome, because she is not a good person." If that's your response, you're not actually disagreeing with her. She said she felt unwelcome, you're basically saying, "Good. Yes. That's a good result."

Why would I respond to "her feelings" when the facts of the matter is that SHE actually attacked and insulted/harassed the person she portrays as an evil harasser, and not the other way around? My response is that her account of what happened is wholly inaccurate and tries to reverse victim and perpetrator e.g. DARVO or "Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender"

Not to say that she hasn't provided any proof for many of the claims made.

How do "her feelings" in any way matter over the facts of the situation? This doesn't make sense, I can't discuss anything based on "other people's feelings".

> I feel for her but she needs psychiatric care

That's crossing the line of civility and you are actively making derogatory remarks of another HN member. who are you to judge her mental state? are you a doctor? Do you have a degree in psychology? No you don't.

You might read what happened and come to a different conclusion than what others have. That's fine. But you are making personal attacks with statements like that, and that has no place in this discussion. at all.

It's the commenter above me who was insinuating that someone was so mentally traumatized that they couldn't help but lash out at innocent parties; if you find that insinuation uncivil, perhaps you should direct your remarks in that commenter's direction, not mine.

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