Hacker News Reader

Comment by renlo | Hacker News Reader

Why does everything have to be a big deal these days? Forgive, forget, move on.

Because women should not have to "forgive, forget, move on" when it comes to being disrespected and having their career held back.

But this sounds like a real mistake someone can make... how do you know which groups of people are together? If they're spaced apart enough it's not hard mistake them as separate groups. Not to mention you don't know what the assistant's tone was or whether or not the author was misinterpreting the situation. Honestly, that blog post feels like bait for a forced debate based on an anecdote with little to no information/evidence of anything.

I find it illuminating that there are comments alternately explaining that his happened because she wasn't standing close enough to the group or that it's just simple Bayesian probability that black women aren't important.

I'd really like to see a debate between these two groups. Like both agree that nothing wrong happened, but who has the best explanation why it's all ok?

we have no idea what happened. it's possible the 3 men were sitting together talking while the woman boss was sitting farther away. it seems that whenever a mistake happens it must be because of your sex or race and nothing else.

Yes, I agree. This must be an elaborate attempt by Raymond Chen to trick us into believing in gender bias.

There's no reason to discount this post, but you're talking about a secondhand story. We have one account from someone a step removed from the story.

The post is about bias, and people are guilty of their own biases in perspective.

But this woman's career was not held back. She was the head of the department. So, if this story is evidence of anything at all, it's that this sort of bias doesn't matter. That being said, I don't think this story is evidence of much of anything.

If nothing else, because people who screw up should have better manners.

You step on my foot, I notice and ask you to get off, and you immediately do and say "sorry" -> I forgive, forget, move on.

You step on my foot, I notice and ask you to get off and you delay, express surprise, finally do, and then explain, at length, that you didn't notice, aren't that heavy, meant nothing by it, but you're sorry if I'm offended (and it's the third time it's happened this year) -> kind of a big deal, because I'm getting very tired of this cp.

How do you extrapolate that from the post?

I agree. If it was for a man instead of her, it would've been nothing. And I'm sure this happens often for men too, they just don't think about it.

I don't really agree with your sentiment at all, but I think that the discussion that can come from it is really valuable, so I hope your comment doesn't get downvoted into oblivion.

Why does everyone have to complain about other people's complaints these days? Forgive, forget, move on.

Once isn't a big deal.

If it happens all of the time (and this type of thing seems to) then that makes it a big deal.

To forgive implies that someone is sorry for what happened. Non-apologies as mentioned in the post tends to mean that they aren't actually sorry, and just don't want to deal with the discomfort of being called out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com