Comment by mememachine | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mememachine | Hacker News Reader

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>I wonder (doubt) if they've ever been abused. It's hard for someone who has been abused to come forward, let alone stand up to an abuser.

If they dont stand up for themselves on any level, then they simply arent being abused i dont believe. If you cant express your own discomfort, its not anyone but your fault youre uncomfortable. This is a hard truth.

(copied from my other comment in this thread)

I'll give you a clear example. Suppose you have a pattern of behavior around me that offends and discomforts me. If I speak out, and complain, and you continue, you are probably being abusive (although not necessarily.) On the otherhand, if I make no attempt to express my discomfort in any way (doesnt mean verbal, could be anything), then the fault lies with ME, the supposed victim. I can't blame somebody for failing to read my mind. And this is the problem with professional victims.

Personally, the uber story absolutely did not read that way. The issue is with people in these comments making overly broad claims.

We've banned this account for trolling.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13748377 and marked it off-topic.

I'm actually not trolling... I was making a real effort to have a genuine discussion here believe it or not. To be honest I'm not sure what I did wrong, and I'm definitely not pleased with this result.

Perhaps you weren't trolling intentionally, but you made the quality of this already divisive thread far lower in the two ways that aren't ok here: unsubstantiveness and incivility. You've also done this before.

I think this is far from truth, never mind hard truth and your example is way off point. I would say there are actions which clearly don't need an indication from the aggrieved party to recognise as abuse, such as seriously telling someone to "quit being a whiny bitch" from a position of power, in front of a team, in the workplace. You don't need to be a mind reader to understand this is not acceptable behaviour.

There are clearly cases in which attempting to stand up to abusive behaviour has the potential to cause more problems (at the very least in the short term) than by staying silent - it's no surprise this occurs in domestic situations. Can you not empathise with people who feel this way, that maybe there are good reasons to not express the discomfort?

If one is so utterly devoid of empathy as to be unable to pick up when they are making others (caveat: unnecessarily) uncomfortable--which is to say that an uncomfortable conversation about job performance is different in kind from being a shithead sexist--then they should be nowhere near a position of authority in the first place.

This victim-blaming nonsense should end, pronto.

"If they dont stand up for themselves on any level, then they simply arent being abused"

This is, hands down, the worst take ever.

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