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Comment by serg_chernata | Hacker News Reader

Watching from the sidelines as a white male, I have to say that I find these kinds of situations so confusing. Some people want these differences to be highlighted, while others like yourself want the complete opposite. I'm left believing that my only choice is to have no opinion. Though I lean towards your stance across the board.

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> I'm left believing that my only choice is to have no opinion.

I learned this lesson a long time ago from the role models in my life that ended up getting burned because of having a differing viewpoint from whatever societal winds were blowing. I, and I realize probably cynically, now only elect to share, post, tweet, or whatnot whatever only can positively benefit my "brand". Sometimes I have to act like my own PR person, because if I learned anything, anything you say can and most likely probably will be used against you. Working in foodservice for 8 years before switching to developer taught me if something you say doesn't offend or piss someone off, you just haven't ran into the right person yet.

That's my favorite quote from one my favorite characters of Red Mars: “It was a mistake to speak one's mind at any time, unless it perfectly matched your political purpose; and it never did.”

Which character was that? John? Frank? Man I loved that series.

Frank. Coincidentally, he was reflecting on having spoken up about the treatment of women (in a certain community).

Frank, book 1, after a rant on women condition in muslim culture I believe

I'm with you but I pretty much opted out of social media entirely. If I do participate, it's generally for the purpose of keeping in touch with someone or watching a band's tour schedule. Sharing opinions is just not "safe" anymore.

Sharing opinions is just not "safe" anymore

Free speech is dead.

Not dead - you can speak your mind - just you pay a social price to do so. Free speech, even in the most libertarian concept I have doesn't prevent other people's right to criticize your speech - in fact, I'd say it encourages just that. Speak out against stuff you don't like rather than censoring it.

Ultimately it's an effect of large, diverse communities and deep political divisions.

If you want to have political discussions in such public places without suffering a reputation hit, the only way to do so is under a pseudonym - and you're free to do that on many sites.

Just because something is legal doesn't mean we're at liberty to do it. People mistake society for government and vice versa.

I'd argue you're still at liberty to do it - you just have to be willing to accept any social prices associated with it. Other people enjoy the same liberties that you do, they have every right to think and say whatever they will about you due to your speech.

Of course, this is really only a significant issue on a public forum, on which you can post pseudonymously and still gain any benefits of discussion without paying any significant toll. Some people view this as a negative and want to ban this kind of commenting - I love it, it means you can experiment with different views, make arguments you might not want to make in real life and see what sticks with you.

>Id argue you're still at liberty to do it - you just have to be willing to accept any social prices associated with it.

You can say that about almost anything. I'm at liberty to murder my neighbor, I just have to accept the price.

I'm talking in terms of moral rights - which not necessarily everyone will agree on - but there are some generally accepted ones. For example, murder would violate your neighbors right to life.

Denying your neighbor the ability to speak out against your opinions violates their right to free speech. If you don't like it, argue back.

this looks like equivocation.

the quoted 'at liberty' seems to refer to something like not being restricted by the law of the land.

saying 'at liberty to murder' seems to refer to something like bodily autonomy/physical capability.

Social media can become mass media, and it's not up to you to decide if and when that happens.

In the past, you could just vocalise your opinion, and it would not survive many hops in the real-world social network.

So yeah, you can express your opinion, but your chance of being crucified for it has risen significantly.

If you express your opinion on a private forum instead of a public one, you're much less likely to be crucified for it. I can make nasty off-handed comments to my friends in private chat all day, with very little fear that it'll see the light.

Ultimately sheer quantity of people is the bigger problem than anything else.

> I can make nasty off-handed comments to my friends in private chat all day, with very little fear that it'll see the light.

And then, someone decides to take a screenshot, out of context, and post it somewhere for the whole world to see.

It's possible, but it's far, far less likely than a post on social media with your name tied to it - it's also completely deniable and contains only usernames.

This crosses the Internet boundary too - see e.g. the well-known case of a guy who lost his job because someone overheard his meatspace conversation and decided to post it on-line...

> In the past, you could just vocalise your opinion, and it would not survive many hops in the real-world social network.

In the past, "vocalizing your opinion" meant debating friends over drinks, the difference today is that every person with an opinion deliberately leverages modern technology to broadcast that opinion to as many people as possible, and the more that receive it, the better. Naturally, people who disagree will respond... the system is working as intended.

> Naturally, people who disagree will respond... the system is working as intended.

Interesting elision. Will you expand upon it?

That's free-speech. Person A freely makes a statement and anyone else can freely respond to it. That's the ideal that everyone envisions and it's also the reality on the ground.

Er...not really, no. Some speech is freer than others. I already posted the link earlier, but here it goes again:

https://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/11/24/the-yale-problem-beg...

I read the link. Please elaborate on how this demonstrates that "some speech is freer than others"?

Creating an environment in which some people are justifiably afraid to speak, for fear not of counterargument but of very substantial punishment merely for dissenting from, or even seeking more clearly to understand, the permissible range of opinion, seems like a pretty clear problem to me. No doubt some feel otherwise.

> Creating an environment in which some people are justifiably afraid to speak

Those who you are appearing to condemn would just as easily use the language of "justifiably afraid to speak" in the context of their own political issues, but I am guessing you would disagree with their particular justifications, yet the implication you seem to be making is that they are "more free" to speak, even though both sides are equally capable.

The particular topic is irrelevant, there is certainly a venue in which any opinion would antagonize a particular crowd of close-minded ideologues, but just because a certain group of people are closed-off to certain types of ideas, doesn't mean you are any less free to speak them.

Imagine Obama giving a speech to a crowd of Trump supporters.

Imagine Trump giving a speech to a crowd of Obama supporters.

Both sides would claim "they screamed our guy down and didn't even give him a chance to speak, the [right/left] are killing free speech"... well, they'd both be wrong because freedom to speak doesn't mean everyone will agree, and if you broadcast an unpopular opinion in the wrong crowd, you get an angry mob; this doesn't mean your freedom is being trampled on, because there are plenty of places you can go to speak your ideas where everyone will clap and cheer and exclaim how enlightened you for sharing the clearly-correct-opinion regarding topic x.

It's a bit of a stretch, I think, to equate an intellectually chilly or even hostile reception, on the one hand, with professional blackballing over mere opinions, and in one case that comes to mind an attempt to incite multiple criminal investigations over a piece of satire, on the other.

I don't imagine that either side in the current political conflict would in general be any more virtuous than the other, given power. The thing about power is that, having it, one is tempted to use it. But it would be foolish to ignore the fact that, in the current political conflict, one side by and large does have power, and is less shy daily in wielding it.

Some believe the proper solution to this is to wrest that power away from those who now hold it, the better to wield it and say, well, they hit us first. I understand the appeal, but disagree with the goal; I would rather see a modus vivendi which enables both sides of the political divide to live more or less in peace with one another, ideally without the sort of constant incitement that goes on today. Such behavior seems probable by trivial extrapolation to take us all to a place where nearly none of us wants to go, and even most of those few who think they think otherwise will drown in horror and regret.

Ignoring reality doesn't seem likely to advance such a goal, but on the other hand, there's little evidence to suggest that is a goal which many are likely to share.

If only that. Take the well-known case of a woman who overheard a private joke between two men on a programming conference and posted an outraged message to social media, which promptly got one of the men fired.

It's not the person who got hurt that "leveraged modern technology to broadcast that opinion to as many people as possible" - it's the other person, the one who overheard stuff and got offended. This is why many start to feel afraid voicing their opinions - because even if you try to keep it to a small group of your friends, there's no telling when someone decides to rebroadcast it publicly on the Internet, and then all hell breaks loose.

There's a lack of proportionality to the "system" you describe.

Someone with a dozen twitter followers, all friends and family, who has no intent to "broadcast to as many people as possible" but just to comment to acquaintances, can say something juuuust a little bit ignorant and, if they happen to get noticed by an "influencer", suddenly have thousands of angry replies, calls to their employer, death threats, etc. They might not have even been broadcasting on twitter, but might have told a joke to a friend in a public place, perhaps even a joke that was misunderstood or misheard by someone listening in, and then suddenly find themselves in the middle of a storm. And it's not typically a storm of people correcting mistaken ideas or helping them reason through errors, but a storm of people seeking vengeance -- not "hey man, that thing you just said is demeaning and wrong", but "you're a bad person and you should be cast out of society".

That is not "the system working as intended" (well, maybe it is in some peoples' minds, but if so it's a terrible system!) That's not a system that fixes ignorance; that's a system that creates a black market for unpopular opinions and that creates fear and resentment.

Personally, I don't think tribalism / group-think, as well as public / private image spaces are very new things at all. Scandals, blacklisting, even execution for having the "wrong opinion" for the social norm of the time -- that's unfortunately pretty common throughout history.

From my viewpoint, an issue with a lot of today's social media is it doesn't feel as nakedly public as it really is. Personally, I wouldn't go into a large room of often random people that you don't know well, and loudly break traditional rules of etiquette by broadcasting inflammatory viewpoints on potentially pot-stirring topics like politics, religion, etc. Likewise, I feel the same with Facebook: that is not the place to discuss these sorts of topics due to how very public Facebook is. Yet a lot of people do that on Facebook and Twitter every day.

Exactly. Free speech goes both ways. The only people I see saying things like 'free speech is dead', are usually the ones who want to say ignorant things and get away with it.

I'll file that away alongside, "The only people who care about privacy are those with something to hide".

Except that is completely different. If you throw a protest, other people have a right to counter-protest.

Not at all; that's an argument used against the right of privacy. GP was merely remarking that those who lament free speech being dead seem to be, at least from my point of view, those who say bad things. Maybe they have a right to say them, but you'll find this occuring elsewhere.

Voat for example was set up as a website that's like reddit but free from "censorship". That being its attractive quality, many people who value that quality highly went there, and it quickly turned into a truly vile place. My hypothesis is that this happened because the most of the people who could be described as "censored on Reddit" were actually censored for what I would think is a good reason - for saying vile/Nazi/etc. things. Therefore, even if that group was not entirely made of such people, Voat became a place just for them.

I think that communities which have a major selling point of free speech will tend to attract those who feel censored first, and bound to fall into the sort of site almost nobody wants, driving away "legitimate" censored users and failing to attract more people. Most "good" things aren't censored, remember.

Even when looked at from a progressive perspective I think what you're bringing up is a bigger problem to be honest.

You're taking people who maybe think that say, write shitty things about fat people or want to use that as motivation to lose weight and putting them in a basket with people who were subscribed to /r/niggers.

Pushing people out of major communities over minor offenses only results in the promotion of more offensive views in those people. This kind of exclusion from the mainstream results in extremification of views in those individuals. I've felt it myself, I've found myself agreeing with things that I know mere years ago I would have outright rejected, but now contemplate. People don't back down on views like that, they just clamp down harder. So in my opinion it's a lot better to just argue with them and not to censor them.

Arguing for abolition of slavery in South Carolina in 1838 or so would certainly be ignorant within that context. Times change. Today's normal is tomorrows ignorant and vise versa.

Realistically, being in a blue state, if i were to say anything but the most politically popular thing about this topic on Twitter or Facebook, and a colleague got wind of it, I'd get fired, and be essentially unemployable in any of the big tech hubs. Unless I wanted to work for the next Uber-like company that will inevitably get destroyed online (even if its for good reasons).

The social price is extremely high now. It's very nearly as bad as being tossed in jail.

I agree that it's normal to pay a social price for saying crummy things. I'd argue that the climate of our times is such that even reasonable opinions that conflict with a certain point of view are demonized and punished. We've become ultra sensitive and overbearing as a society.

> just you pay a social price to do so

it's not unheard of for this to go much, much further. doxxing, harassing associates, campaigns to fire people, 'de-platforming', stigmatization etc.

such pursuit of wrongthink produces chilling effects and balkanization.

I'm not sure that free speech is dead so much as people's ability to think critically is dead, or at the very least their ability to deal with the idea that sometimes people who are great in every other respect advocate a position they don't.

I think this is more correct, but I'm not sure there's really any point in differentiating between the two. The end result either way is: either keep your mouth shut or parrot what the crowd is saying, even if it's the opposite of what they were saying yesterday.

I have to agree on this one. Self censorship is the new norm.

What you can't say http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

... with its scope extended to any imaginable opinion without exception.

Here is the thing. You can have private opinions but when you express them publicly, the larger the audience the larger the chance that someone can totally misinterpret / take out of context / take IN context but write a diatribe against / etc. what you say.

It could be someone who is outraged or someone who actually uses your words to further their ideological agenda against those who are outraged.

In short, the more people see what you say, the more chances that it can run away from under you and distract from your brand and its focus.

That is why Coke executives don't just tweet their personal views on topics, etc. and why politicians stay on message.

Anything you say publicly can and may be used against YOUR GOALS. And maybe against your character.

"Give me six lines written by the most honest man, and I will find something there to hang him. As quoted in Champlain's Dream‎ (2008) by David Hackett Fischer"

And with AI you can probably quote mine anyone like Richelou.

Sometimes, like Trump, the controversy helps attract media attention and you can find a core audience who flocks to you. Then you become a polarizing figure. If that's your way of getting famous, then the price you pay is people quote mining what you say later and you having to filter out people who are constantly lining up to debate you and take you down.

Trump has been able to sidestep the parsing of his words by not standing for anything and being so willing to change with the wind and just say so much random stuff, while at the same time saying what enough people want to hear that he totally polarized the country.

My personal view is that Trump is deliberately trolling the media, and they are taking the bait every time. There's also a "they can dish it out but can't take it" element to it.

I've watched him and I think it is just too hard for him to control himself. He's got the political correctness and factual accuracy version of dyslexia.

IMHO, it's both. He can't help himself, and it works, so he keeps doing it. There's a reason his staff let him twitter.

Most inside baseball politics places like Axios and Politico have reported that his staff has desperately tried to keep him off Twitter

It doesn't really matter if he's deliberately doing it as long as the effects work for him. A strategy doesn't have to be deliberate to be effective.

I wanted to comment on a different factor on HN:

When I posted this, the upvotes went up to +3 points, and then steadily have been declining to -2 points.

No one has commented as to why they are downvoting or whatever. Fine. But I have noticed this on many of my other posts. And I wonder sometimes whether people actually have downvoting rings / clones on HN for topics/people/opinions! It seems to be free to downvote or upvote, so economically it would make sense that there are no repercussions.

To my knowledge, you can't downvote unless you have a certain amount of karma.

> It seems to be free to downvote or upvote, so economically it would make sense that there are no repercussions.

Since there is no cost to downvoting, it is cheaper in terms of time and effort to--anonymously!--censor opinions than to express them. It's doubly bad because, in order to acquire downvoting privileges, you must first express enough "correct" opinions, which makes the system self-selecting for certain views. It's a fundamentally broken system, because it incentivizes the wrong things, and it's why I stopped commenting here....oops.

> Since there is no cost to downvoting, it is cheaper in terms of time and effort to--anonymously!--censor opinions than to express them.

Sometimes it's cheaper in terms of time and effort to downvote rather than engage because the comment or commentator displays obvious* signs that a discussion will be fruitless.

* To me, of course; I only represent myself and my opinions.

This is called self-censorship.

On the one hand it is probably good for your "brand" on the other hand, authenticity is a key factor in having a strong brand.

No-win situation...

> On the one hand it is probably good for your "brand" on the other hand, authenticity is a key factor in having a strong brand.

That's the difference between marketing and advertising. Done well, your audience won't even realize you're marketing to them.

If you do the public face just right, people will think you authentically share those same views in private.

This is why I only use pseudonyms online and don't tie together my "real life" with my "life online".

I think it's foolish to tie the two together if you ever want to express your personal opinions. Just because they're "popular now" or aren't causing harm in the now doesn't mean that will hold true 10 years from now, keeping in mind that "the internet never forgets".

Indeed!

I have a professional life, using my real name, with virtually no public exposure. I have a personal life as well, using social media, but locked down to close family and friends. And I've had numerous "hobby lives", Mirimir being one of the most recent and active, isolated through VPN services and Tor.

'If something you say doesn't offend or piss someone off, you just haven't ran into the right person yet'

Can I quote you on that?

> because if I learned anything, anything you say can and most likely probably will be used against you.

Even right now, writing on a niche message board using a fake name, I'm hesitant to voice my honest opinions about anything related to race or gender or other topic like that. it's like there's an army of internet people waiting for you to mess up and will punish you with controversy and/or honestly try and get you fired.

I agree 100%.

There is no serious dialog on complex issues like this, because if something you say gets misunderstood, your career is in jeopardy.

That's a great loss.

Freedom and rights are wonderful things. But as I see them used to justify censorship, I can't help but think that's exactly what's happening: they're being used.

I don't know about you, but I rather resent being used, and I won't have it.

We need our serious dialogue. We are undertaking a revolutionary project, realigning the way the sexes relate. The changes of the last century have been enormous. It is arrogance and folly to think that the monotone wisdom of one political perspective is all we need to guide us through such a storm. We need diversity and respect for opposing opinions. We need to gather wisdom from all experiences and backgrounds, and build something excellent.

Absolutely. 9/10 of the comments that I write on HN never see the light of day. And not just on HN, but pretty much every social media platform I engage with.

I don't feel like I have anything particularly controversial, inflammatory, or offensive to say. But, I so strongly don't want to be perceived that way that I just opt-out most of the time.

"Ask your doctor if Fukitol® is right for you" ;-)

Does this ring a bell?

"...so I thought the talk was well received.

But then the discussion began, and it was the most unremittingly hostile questioning I’ve ever had. I don’t mind when people ask hard or critical questions, but I was surprised that I had misread the audience so thoroughly. My talk had little to do with gender, but the second question was “So you think rape is OK?” [..]

After the first dozen questions I noticed that not a single questioner was male."

https://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/11/24/the-yale-problem-beg...

> it's like there's an army of internet people waiting for you to mess up and will punish you with controversy and/or honestly try and get you fired.

It sounds like you can relate to existing as a person who is different in tech, then.

seems unclear that being `different in tech` implies that `people [are] waiting for you to mess up and will punish you with controversy and/or honestly try and get you fired`.

I don't want to make this a Trump thing ... but I"m gonna. I didn't like that he tweeted the CNN clothesline but I just read their response which was doxing and extorting a bs apology from the creator. It shows that the problem is worse than you've pointed out. Even if you're relatively anonymous, you'll be guilty by association if someone uses your words and amplifies them in a way you never could.

Well, the creator of the CNN clothesline wasn't merely "guilty by association" given he had a clear history of posting hate speech and creating fairly obviously bigoted content.

> if something you say doesn't offend or piss someone off, you just haven't ran into the right person yet.

Agreed. No matter how calculated you are chances are someone is going to be angry or atleast peeved by you having an opinion. I believe that everyone has a right to voicing their opinion. By this I mean that people should have a chance to be heard, but I believe the backlash that comes from voicing an opinion is sometimes a necessary evil and it too should not be completely silenced. There's a healthy balance in the war of words.

I personally feel despite the backlash if you feel strongly about something that you feel is right then speak out about it, and have a voice. Some words need to be heard and expressed. People do often have strong biases, but your words can hold power to sway someone to either side.

One important thing to note about truly making a debate a learning experience is just because the person is on the other side of the debate doesn't mean you can't learn some principle or truth from them. You can almost always learn or see some shred of truth from any argument no matter how fallacious, wrong, or stupid it may seem. Our job as conversationalists should be to try to separate the fact from the fiction.

As words are expressed and understood people come to know where their misconceptions lie. They start aligning their perceptions with what they truly feel is right.

I love hacker news the community often does not take a single side, and the views on both sides are heard. This helps me decide where I should stand on the issue. So I just have to say thank you to those who give constructive thoughts that help guide the conversation.

As a fresh US immigrant from the middle of Europe yet visually passing as an average white man, I haven't even shared the style of upbringing that people assume I did, and yet I lean closer to the opinion expressed above because I fear that a determined person with an agenda can find a way to use my story or opinions to illustrate their point and paint me and broad classes of people as problematic in the process.

I empathize with those who've also turned to self-censorship for fear of being branded as part of a the problem. I want to have the tough conversations, but not at the expense of being made a public example for holding opinions that are neither hateful nor malicious, just colored by my origins and journey through life: the exact same factors that others advocate taking into account.

The whole thing is really unfortunate: people holding moderate (and in many ways, mainstream) opinions are withdrawing from the public discourse, which I don't believe is conducive to satisfactory progress.

I have kids to take care of. There are certain opinions I might have that I dare not discuss. I don't even dare say I have such opinions even without naming them, that's how deep the impulse to self-censor goes. Let's just say I do, hypothetically.

I would very much fear for the economic consequences of voicing various opinions. Even if they didn't lead to my termination at work, I'm certain they would prevent any kind of career advancement.

I'm reasonably sure I can survive in the world without my opinions being known, or the changes I presumably would like to see not being made. In short, they win, I'll survive somehow, and my kids will eat. They'll also maybe learn that some things I might believe are not acceptable, and will have to think about that when choosing to believe them themselves.

Certain ideas and people have definitively won the day, and it's now just survival mode for many.

The question then is, will the world your children inherit be better or worse for people such as yourself holding their tongues.

These free speech rights we technically have were not acquired without cost--on the contrary, they came at enormous cost in blood. Now we refrain from defending them because doing so might inconvenience us.

Of course, it's easy for me to say this, sitting in front of a computer writing vague comments. Food for thought, especially for Americans the day after Independence Day.

I think most of the founders and revolutionaries didn't believe they were martyring themselves for a hopeless cause. The inconvenience here would be the total ruin of my family in exchange for the satisfaction of having spoke my mind on some issue, which isn't a good trade.

You could create an online persona to have those "tough conversations". And use VPN services and/or Tor to keep it isolated from your real-world identity.

One invites scrutiny by advertising one's anonymity.

Yes, but you can have personas that don't seem at all anonymous. They can have addresses, cell numbers, etc. As much depth as you like.

this comment speaks my own views in many ways. thanks for sharing.

i'm still bothered by the active censorship of comments and discussion that occurred earlier in the week, and i hope this discussion is informative for the moderators, who are hopefully having discussions about how best to handle similar situations in the future.

You may be misunderstanding how HN moderation works. The overwhelming majority of 'censorship' of comments (if by that you mean flagging and downvoting) is done by HN users. That includes the recent threads on sexual harassment.

Mods are not trying to optimize HN for opinion but for intellectual curiosity, and that requires substantive discussion. That's pretty much the whole story, though of course there are a thousand details.

This thread is different from the other ones because the OP is different. Mods are doing the same thing here as in any other. That's devilishly hard for people to see because everyone interprets moderation through the filter of their own pre-existing opinions and there's little we can do about it. I wrote about this here if anyone wants more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14693348.

Its almost like a industry upon itself, being busy being insulted and helping to overcome those insults by selling seminars, stickers and absolution.

I almost feel sorry for anyone who is to deal with either side. Harassment is one thing, but if that industry is the only help you can turn too- that is worser. Cause this side has no interest in resolving the core Issue (it literaly lives from it) and doesn't have a interest in a good outcome for the harassed either.

Still, if i think back on the woman i tutored in the freshman C-class - and later in there careers - any creep in power molesting those: Its good that this industry exists, to apply pressure too keep standards. For every woman in tech, should be able to walk, live and write like maria.

I deeply understand this sentiment, especially the "what can/should I do?" aspect, but I think "watching from the sidelines" is a mistake. If we do nothing then the status quo will tend toward more segregation, not less.

Some simple things I do to try to make things better in my workplace:

With others:

  * actually listen
  * never interrupt
  * make sure criticism is constructive
  * in a shared codebase, use the lightest possible touch (avoid aesthetic refactoring)

With myself:

  * acknowledge my own privileges/biases, and be aware of the fact that simply what I look like/how I speak etc. can affect other people
  * be open to the possibility that my own opinions may not be immutable objective truths (this is hard)

> make sure criticism is constructive

My new motto (if I can pull it off), is to never criticize, ever. If I see a project on an obvious downward trajectory, rather than pointing out the blatantly obvious things that could turn it around, I am going to smile and repeat the same nonsense feel good crap my coworkers do as if everything is just fine, and watch it crash and burn. And then in my next interview, I will declare it a smashing success! In my experience, this is literally the recipe for success in modern times.

I should note, these observations are based on working in large enterprises where failure of an individual project can be absorbed, as opposed to a smaller shop where success actually matters.

> acknowledge my own privileges/biases

I'm fine with acknowledging my shortcomings. I think it shows a healthy humility and a kind of leadership that is really lacking these days.

But I find the language of privilege to be a certain kind of virtue signalling. I don't ascribe to the underlying philosophy, so I would be misleading my audience to talk about my "privileges".

> the fact that simply what I look like/how I speak etc. can affect other people

That can describe really bad, really racist outcomes. It's not fair, at least in the Rawlsian sense, to make people responsible for how others react to who they are.

Well, I think that's ok. As fellow white male, our opinion is not really what matters here. It's not really about us. We are involved, we try to help each other out and whatnot, but in the end it's ok to just be there and listen for once.

What's wrong with having no opinion?

We're talking about the behavior of others; who cares if Sally wants to order chicken or Fred wants a blue car or Mark and Sarah want to form a club for Pittsburgh-expats? If someone wants to create an award for women/minorities/lefties/gingers/etc, it seems perfectly reasonable to feel neither positively or negatively about it. This isn't a test, you don't get marked down for "no answer".

People will always (and should) have differing opinions, don't let that stop you from forming your own opinion and then working to improve the situation.

Make up your own mind. Be a human. With a spine. And your own opinion. People might not like it, but at least you'll be you.

It's perfectly reasonable to have opinions, but to step back and listen, actively and thoughtfully.

An episode of Netflix's Dear White People focuses on the white guy. Might express some of the same thoughts and feelings.

I don't see their preferences as necessarily conflicting from your point of view. Some people of various groups want the ability to have events of their own, and others want to be included in non-restrictive coding events. Allow/encourage both. Don't fight back against "Women Who Code" events, and be welcoming and polite to women at non-restrictive coding events. You don't need to have a stance on which is better, and as long as you don't try to have a white or men exclusive event I don't see you having any trouble.

Why would a white or men exclusive event be trouble? Are white men the tainted scourge of the world?

Are you asking sincerely, or are you trying to do some false equivalence sealioning nonsense?

It seemed like a legitimate question. The parent comment said pretty much every selectivity group is okay except for white males and the child post simply asked why is that the case. At least that's how I read it.

My point is that I find it extremely hard to believe that anybody could ask the question "what's wrong with a whites only event?" in sincerity.

That said, I admit that a men only event is reasonable in certain circumstances.

[..] I find these kinds of situations so confusing. Some people want these differences to be highlighted, while others like yourself want the complete opposite. I'm left believing that my only choice is to have no opinion.

The post and the parent comment show that this is not a matter of opinion, not a matter to be confused of; we're all human, nothing more, nothing less. Keeping this in mind will clear things up for everyone eventually.

We all do it, but sharing opinions tends not to be all that useful anyway. From someone else's point of view it's just another stranger's opinion on the Internet.

Better to ask questions, share links, and tell stories based on personal experience if you have any.

There's a third choice: Have a supportive opinion. Knowing full-well that you don't understand what it's like to be a woman/African American/non-binary/non-straight person in this situation, express belief in everyone's individual experience, and support them in it. Don't assume you know, just listen and show support. If it's a matter of having to decide between the two opinions, bow out, because you have no say.

I can't agree more - coming from former east-bloc european environment where women had to work same as men and there was no racism (simply because there were only white people for last 2000 years on this place), both of what you mention is distant issue (but clearly some other places are/were riddled with it).

I already treat women as equal (actually more), same goes to my LBGT friends and colleagues, and same for all non-white people. But constant presence in media is making these topics so annoying to me, I wish more focus was dedicated to healthy lifestyle for example (probably being selfish here but that's my view, and view of people close to me too).

Things like company-wide emails encouraging us to go to gay prides over weekend "where you can finally participate and show your hetero support" - god damn I work for banking corp with 130k employees. If I wanted to go there, I would be already going for last 10+ years. I show support to the cause by treating them as equal, because THEY ARE EQUAL, not treating them like disabled kids. Keep work emails about work, and let me do my own stuff in my own time.

"Only white people" doesn't mean "no racism". As an Englishman, let me assure you my ancestors managed racism against white Irish people extremely well, and - somewhat ironically - plenty of the less educated people around me today are extremely racist to eastern Europeans (who are supposedly "takin' er jerbs").

Your point is "I don't do racist things, therefore there isn't a problem", which is just not true - there are still huge problems for tons of people with racism, sexism and other bigotry, and just because you don't see it or notice it doesn't make it not a problem. You got annoyed? I'm sure some non-racists were annoyed when all anyone could talk about was how bad slavery was. If you don't care about the issue, feel free to ignore it - but saying that people are imposing on you by caring is just unreasonable.

Is Irish a race? I'm thinking you mean discrimination.

I mean racism. It's commonly accepted that race is a fuzzy term when it comes to this kind of thing and encompasses discrimination against people based on background, nationality and ethnic groups. However you want to define racism, the discrimination against Irish people in England fits the same pattern and has largely the same problems as racism in other forms.

In case you weren't aware, yes, Irish is an ethnicity, dating back over 9,000 years, making it older than most existing ethnicities. Wikipedia has more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_people

Being an island, Ireland was quite cut off genetically from the world for quite a long time, allowing a distinct ethnicity to develop. And as you may be aware, "race" isn't a real scientifically valid concept, but the word is used colloquially to refer to ethnicity, which is a scientifically valid concept that can be measured using genetics.

>I already treat women as equal (actually more)

I don't think that word means what you think.

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