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Comment by mightykan | Hacker News Reader

We should teach our sons to truly respect women. We should teach our sons to be respectful honest decent human beings. We should teach our sons to not be assholes who think they are entitled to a woman’s body. We should teach our sons to be humans with emotions and empathy for others. We should teach our sons to not be toxic despicable entitled pathetic beings. It’s on us (men). If we behave badly, it’s squarely on us. No external factor (law, regulation, social status, etc) would have any effect if we don’t know how (or don’t want) to be good.

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You're missing a huge part of the problem here. People with power are the ones who need to be "taught" (punished).

This behavior can only occur repeatedly when someone can get away with it, because they have power. If they don't have power, they are punished (often harshly), and a rational person will not repeat that behavior.

Your blanket approach is completely ridiculous. You act like the problem is that men aren't being "taught" properly, when the real problem is that there is little or no accountability for people who have accumulated enough money and/or political power (whether it be on a social scale, or within an organization, as seen in the article).

It's also very wrong for you to assume that only men can abuse their power. Fowler's article even has an example of women abusing it (HR).

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I have zero power now but have the potential to have it. If I don't know how to behave like a decent human around my female coworkers and peers right now, I would have no idea how to do this when I have more power (e.g. become a manager). But, then, I'd have the power to cause irreparable emotional and societal damage. If I don't know how to act like a rational reasonable human being who respects others no matter their background or gender, this won't change. All that will change is that I have the authority to cause great damage.

I don't know much and I certainly don't claim to know much. All I know is that if we (men) don't curb our own behavior, we're the one squarely at fault.

I'm so tired of this "not all men" attitude. As someone who gets paid to make fact-based decisions all day, I cannot possibly ignore this ridiculous argument that women are at fault. No, way. Yes, anything is possible but the scenario you're proposing is so rare that is an anomaly. Get off that horse, dude. Stop being on the wrong side of history.

> If I don't know how to behave like a decent human around my female coworkers and peers right now, I would have no idea how to do this when I have more power.

You're talking as if the men in the article don't know that what they're doing is wrong. If some man accidentally does something harmful against a woman, he can learn from those mistakes. A pattern of repeated sexual harassment, though? That's certainly not due to ignorance.

Once again, you are unable to grasp the real problem. Guess what -- men can be victims of the abuse of power too, whether that's at the hands of men or women.

>I have zero power now but have the potential to have it. If I don't know how to behave like a decent human around my female coworkers and peers right now, I would have no idea how to do this when I have more power (e.g. become a manager). But, then, I'd have the power to cause irreparable emotional and societal damage.

Simply becoming a manager doesn't give you power. One of the main purposes of middle management is to take the fall for C-level mistakes, after all. You also need to have your employer's backing. In this case, this manager is especially powerful because Uber backs him even when it's not in their best interest). I don't know how the manager in question here was able to obtain that sort of empowerment, but you are sorely mistaken if you think that his ability to stick around was simply due to a job title.

>I don't know much and I certainly don't claim to know much. All I know is that if we (men) don't curb our own behavior, we're the one squarely at fault.

I don't know how to get this through to you. This problem is that powerful people are unaccountable due to the way that our current society is structured. It has nothing to do with gender. Maybe you think this sort of thing wouldn't happen under a female CEO, but you don't know what the context of the relationship between the manager and powerful people within the company who provide him with agency.

>I'm so tired of this "not all men" attitude.

I have no idea what you mean by this.

>As someone who gets paid to make fact-based decisions all day, I cannot possibly ignore this ridiculous argument that women are at fault.

Who made that argument? I honestly have no idea what your thought process is here.

>Yes, anything is possible but the scenario you're proposing is so rare that is an anomaly.

When did I propose a scenario??

>Get off that horse, dude. Stop being on the wrong side of history.

Ok, you're just incoherent at this point.

> I'm so tired of this "not all men" attitude.

Do you believe that all men are incapable of being decent human beings?

Can I ask why you believe that?

You assume that abuse of power is male only thing. It is not, it is general people thing. The problem is not that men don't know what is right, these know full well what they are doing. Problem is that this behavior is tolerated while women rudely telling that guy off while they are both young is likely to have team turn against her.

"Teach our sons better" ignores the fact that most people know better and behave better. Plus, it kind of has a generational feedback cycle - do you really want to wait twenty years before figuring out whether this plan works?

Much better is consistently work to undermine the power of folks who behave badly.

Can you write an even more sexist comment? Why not teach our children instead to respect other people?!

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