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Comment by akvadrako | Hacker News Reader

I just visited and the top post this month is http://www.metafilter.com/163757/Emotions-are-Work, which was the most anti-male comments I've been exposed to in a while.

The name meta filter implies to me this site wanted to be somewhat neutral and open-ended, but my impression so far is it's become dominated by SJW types, which is going to make it unreadable by me.

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It's true that anyone who dismisses people as 'SJW types' is probably going to experience a lot of cognitive dissonance reading metafilter.

Metafilter has a lot of female users that feel safe expressing their opinion and telling their experiences. Not to rag on HN, because generally the discussions here are pretty respectful, but gender diversity at metafilter is one thing I really value about the site.

MF is a pay-to-post site, so it is skewed towards people who will pay. It's the same as those small elite colleges where people will study something impractical for an exhorbitant fee. You would only pay if you agreed with whatever the orthodoxy is. And it becomes self-selecting, and self-perpetuating. The people on MF are the sort of people who would say "OMG I can't believe anyone voted for Trump, because nobody I know did"

MF has a one-time sign-up fee of $5.[0] It's a method of making it less likely that people create fake accounts and for members to value their accounts more. There are some people for whom this fee is beyond what they can pay. For many people, it's a cup of coffee or two, or a beer at a local bar. Yes, it has a gating effect. It'd be interesting to do a more formal study to compare the discussions there with other sites, such as HN, lobste.rs (invite-only), or Reddit.

[0]: http://www.metafilter.com/faq.mefi#1

Just quickly browsing through it, I didn't see anything anti-male. It did strike me that there are many female posters there. Can you point out what you mean specifically?

How about the first sentence, "Women are expected to regulate the emotions of men as well as themselves."

And the first comment, "Anyhow — men who don’t understand their entire emotional range are prone to anger because they can’t meet their own needs."

And the 2nd comment, "I also wonder if that guy wonders if his girlfriends ever had to hire sex workers to manage their emotional needs before they met him."

I don't understand how you can't see it's a one-sided echo chamber.

What exactly do you object to in any of those three sentences as being sexist? I don't understand what anti-male means to you.

You must be trolling. The entire thread is women finding reasons in everything but themselves at all the possible plights in real life.

Also the idea that women are emotionally regulating 2 people in most relationships is such nonsense that it doesn't even deserve discussion.

There is a type of person who is so oblivious to the plight of others, he thinks any criticism of his privilege[0] is a form of sexism. That is what anti-male means to them.

[0]: (The luxury to be oblivious is itself a manifestation of privilege.)

They are implying that women are better than men.

Making comments about certain kinds of men does not equal "women are better than men". Feel free to mutter "not all men", to yourself, every night.

> Feel free to mutter "not all men", to yourself, every night.

You made a substantive point and then ruined it with a personal attack. Please don't do that—it breaks the HN guidelines and makes the thread even worse. Your comment would be fine with just the first sentence.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>> Feel free to mutter "not all men", to yourself, every night. > You made a substantive point and then ruined it with a personal attack.

Can you explain what makes this a personal attack? I support the policy wholeheartedly, but this doesn't seem (to me) to be a violation of it.

I mean, it is mildly rude, but seems a lot closer to "X is left as an excersise for the reader" or "please Read The Friendly Manual", than it is to something like "go fsck yourself" (which would be extremely rude, but still not a personal attack per-se).

If that's one of the most anti-male comments that you've been exposed to in a while, the internet is a safe space for men.

It seemed to me more of a rationalization for the behavior of abusive men; that the reason they're abusive is because they haven't been "regulated" enough, not because they're selfish, or stupid, or enjoy hurting people. It seems the kind of excuse that women make to excuse men, and to excuse themselves staying with abusive men.

I think you make a good point, but just to clarify, I wasn't saying the story was very anti-male. It's that most of the highly rated comments are complaining about men as a group.

Maybe a better phrasing is the highest volume of anti-male comments I've seen in a while.

Then don't read it.

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