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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

Digression: That's an old tired dead horse. When the minority organizes, somebody always calls 'double standard'. "They're racist/sexist too!"

Forgetting these folks don't have the institutional power to harm others. Forgetting that the rest of the world is a de-facto mens/white/whatever club already. Lets just retreat to the ivory tower.

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Forgetting these folks don't have the institutional power to harm others.

Really? I'd say an accusation from those groups can ruin a career.

Yeah, maybe. But consider their very limited career options, maybe they have little to lose by trying to call attention to the biases they constantly live with. A man's career is ruined! Cry for him - because now he's living like a woman? There's some hypocrisy there.

Are you seriously claiming that random innocent men deserve to be ruined because of their gender? Are you really claiming that this state of ruin is "living like a woman"? I like to think that women can amount to something.

When you're approving of driving innocent people out of work because of their chromosomal makeup, maybe you need to step back and reconsider your principles.

whose career ? Name one.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681

Still has a job, just not the same job. Same can't be said for Adria.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Elliott

Dude continuously harasses a woman well after being told to stop, then having his account suspended. That's not "I said the wrong thing", that's criminal harassment.

Scott Aaronson had some pretty tough times for doing absolutely nothing.

Then he got a promotion, and now leads an institute at UT

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419071

I don't have more time to figure out the guy's name but his HN username is mr-hank: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681

Richards got fired and got loads of death threats and racist messages, because of a single tweet. The guy got off easier with just being fired.

I didn't know that this was a competition.

Also someone else getting worse makes this okay? Two wrongs make it right?

The dudebros also got new jobs. Richards did not.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/13/tim-hunt-hun...

was reinstated, is a professor of immunology at the same university.

Do you have a source for that? All I can find (from Wikipedia) is that he was forced to resign from three positions he held, and that he was reappointed to one.

There's another article from a news source I don't particularly trust saying he was offered a new position in Japan.

Either way, even if he's doing fine now it was months of upheaval and a dedicated witch-hunt over comments that were taken completely out of context.

If you have to ask this question, I'd say you're either not paying attention or being willfully ignorant of the tightrope-walking act men have to perform these days to not get lynched by internet mobs.

That's not institutional power. It takes advantage of public opinion, rather than institutions like the government or powerful corporations.

The accusation could be just as harmful coming from an individual, in most cases. It depends on the type of accusation, though.

I've been reading some depressing articles recently about top scientists who have been accused repeatedly, and who kept their careers for decades.

http://mashable.com/2016/01/12/astronomy-professor-sexual-ha...

So maybe one day a single false accusation will be able to ruin a career, but it seems at the moment, multiple factual accusations won't.

Meanwhile, these men do threaten to, and follow through on threats to, ruin the careers of the women unlucky enough to find themselves trapped in professional settings with these sociopaths.

Remember ShirtGate? I don't think it ended this guy's career, but it was a close call.

"What should have been the best week of Matt Taylor's (Rosetta project scientist) professional life ended with him weeping on TV as he apologized for his alleged crime."

More at:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-goldberg-rosetta-...

Like Christian Ott of my alma mater? Seems to be doing fine!

Punching up vs. punching down.

I'm still reflecting how I feel about this, though my inclination is to be forgiving to disempowered minorities -- or majorities.

It's not as if the empowered majority (or minorities) haven't, and don't, make use of similar organisations and tactics. There's something about balancing power which matters.

That said, I'm also somewhat leery of, say, exclusively gender-divided organisations. Contra: the National Organization for Women, which admits both women and men.

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