Hacker News Reader

Comment by zepto | Hacker News Reader

Honestly displaying misogyny seems like it should be discouraged.

I don't see the misogyny, and if I would have heard that at the bar I would have clearly understood what his analogy was meaning.

I wouldn't have even noticed it. I'd never have used the terms he used, but I don't have any real issue with the way it was framed.

I find it odd that would be the thing to pick out within the statements, but perhaps I'm not as sensitive to the language as I should be?

Edit: I can't seem to reply to a level deep, so I will put some remarks here.

Re: over - In my view it was just an analogy, and had no deep insight into the views of marriage. Just my impressions

Re: th0ma5 - Boys doesn't have any negative connotation, but I understand the point you're making. I don't have much to add except that I didn't read it as anything other than an analogy.

Re: zepto - I keep saying bar because that's often where you'll hear this sort of language, but it isn't limited there. I respect your views that it isn't appropriate, and again, I would never use that language to explain it.

But I don't take offense to it. Again, perhaps I should. I may not be as enlightened as I should be.

I think the misogyny claim is because the analogy portrays the choice between a rich woman and poor woman as obviously being in favor of the rich woman, and on top of that it characterizes the poor woman as needy and annoying. Further, he says girl instead of woman. And so basically he ridicules the entire point of marriage which is to commit to your equal life partner, not end up with the best deal, the best girl/wife-object to be purchased. And in doing this he's also denigrating the two competing companies.

But then again, it does reflect a lot of marriage decisions, particularly in high society, so it's probably appropriate. This is actually what happens when personal life starts to look like business life. So probably... better not to be so brazen about it because it's a bit chauvinistic. Honesty isn't always the best policy, sometimes you have to consider people's feelings and reactions.

No, it may be a common thing for boys to not be sensitive to language, sure, and all kinds of boys in business will simply not see misogyny hardly at all.

If you flip the genders, is it misandry?

You keep saying that it would be ok to speak this way at a bar, as if anything that is said at a bar is automatically to be encouraged. That seems like a strange attitude. All kinds of demeaning attitudes are expressed at bars.

Sure. But I think the distinction in view is that, in a bar, what's said is always off the record.

The problem comes when an executive is speaking on the record in the way he would speak off the record.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com