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Comment by rll | Hacker News Reader

That made no sense at all.

It wasn't about gender. It was about "incompetent about technology." Your mom, grandma, dad, grandpa, dumb cousin or incompetent friend would all work as well.

You made it about gender.

Don't you see that you just proved the point? You read "your mother" and you understood "incompetent about technology." That is the sexist stereotype we get irritated by.

The point was about metadata. It's modern to cry about other feelings nowadays though.

Except I would have made the exact same assumption about "your father". The idea is that our parents, grandparents or whatever are technologically incompetent. It had nothing to do with gender.

Again, the only sexist thus far, is you.

It's heartening to see this thread land so solidly on the intersection of sexism and ageism. You're right, assuming older generations are technically incompetent is wrong, mean, and unnecessary--just like assuming the same thing about women. When you combine the two with phrases like "so simple your mom could understand", you end up with a big bucket of nope.

My mom has a STEM degree, and her mom had a bleeding edge Thinkpad when the rest of my family was married to a beige box. My dad is a system administrator, and his dad is a chemical engineer. I have a postgraduate degree in software engineering. To assume any of us are technically incompetent because of our age or gender is insulting, and exclusionary.

Thanks for pointing that out.

If your experience was anything like mine, then you grew up regularly handling technology (fixing computers, hooking up VCRs, etc.) for and explaining it to people older than you. That's the stereotype at play in the title--old person won't understand tech.

It would be quite different (and have a totally different effect) if the title said "3 minute video even a girl will understand"

Google searching shows very many more hits for "your mother would understand" and "your grandmother would understand" than for father / grandfather / grandpa / etc.

The number of query results from a google search aren't evidence of anything except that your argument is weak enough that you couldn't find actual evidence.

So your goal by making people not write titles like this is to completely exterminate people's connotation of it?

We all agree sexism is bad, and there are real issues to overcome in all countries, but sometimes I would feel more supportive of the case if it focused on what really is unfair, and a hindrance to a gender.

>We all agree sexism is bad, and there are real issues to overcome in all countries, but sometimes I would feel more supportive of the case if it focused on what really is unfair, and a hindrance to a gender.

Thank you.

This is so indicative of the internet generation, where talking about something ridiculous and missing the point is seen as actually doing something.

Look where the downvotes are occurring; every comment that doesn't think the title is a big deal. God forbid someone's opinion is different. Remember that when this crowd expresses how great and open to debate HackerNews is as a community.

> You made it about gender.

No, the long history of the phrase used to stereotype someone who knows nothing about technology made it about gender.

EDIT: pointing out that the phrase is sexist and unwelcome is a good thing.

> No, the long history of the phrase used to stereotype someone who knows nothing about technology made it about gender.

No, it was age ageism. But the STEM field has an enormous gender gap so now we're actively looking for every single sentence that might be gender-biased and pretending that our feelings are facts.

This is just another example of having a hammer makes everything look like a nail. The title was very clearly biased... that "older" generation can't understand modern technologies. But we had plenty of people here to defend women, even when they don't need it.

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