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We detached this from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14702885 and marked it off-topic.

Generic ideological tangents lead to flamewars and are so low in information that they're off-topic even when they sound on-topic. For example, you guys have started arguing about "feminism" without the slightest reason to believe you mean the same thing by it. You'd think the triviality of such a disagreement would lower the stakes, but in fact the opposite happens: we each fill in the blank slate with our own demons and everybody's buttons get pushed. The way out of this is to have something more substantive to talk about.

(That's not to say your feelings aren't valid, of course they are, and so are the feelings that flare up in response. The problem is that communication can't take place this way, and we don't want battle here.)

> For example, you guys have started arguing about "feminism" without the slightest reason to believe you mean the same thing by it.

Fair point. Thanks for the clarification. Amusingly, the discussion about feminism was only supposed to be an example of something that tends to get social media discussions heated no matter what direction you go with it (and as something to generally be avoided as a business risk).

It would be helpful for you to phrase your opinions in ways that are not so inflammatory.

For example, instead of saying, "feminism is not about equality" you can say, "some feminists don't want equality." Which will also be more accurate, since there are feminists who do want equality.

I am doing the same thing more and more. The threat of being crucified for sharing or expressing a view not in accordance with the increasingly politically correct society is real.

It is a defensive move for me to avoid talking about politics or anything like that because there is a chance some very politically opinionated person with army of online followers will attack me as insert-type-of bigot.

The safest is to never express my opinion and only talk about business or tech related topics.

This is true on both left and right spectrum.

So the only place you post opinions is where you're protected by anonymity? That's a rough way to live. Have you considered that if you don't feel open enough to speak your opinions in public, maybe they should be challenged?

I disagree with your position on feminism, as it is a blanket statement which you would not want applied to yourself in an opposite position.

As for the left's beliefs on illegal immigration, again, blanket statement. I'm a pretty far leftist, but I agree that unfettered immigration isn't an ideal state. Where we may diverge is asserting causation to where we are today. We spent decades looking the other way as more and more people were crossing our borders because we had an economic benefit to do so — cheap labor. There were jobs we didn't want to pay citizens to do (farming, manual labor, home labor, etc.), and there were thousands of people willing to do them under the table because it was a better offer than they got at home.

We could have curbed this issue as it happened by removing the incentive. We could have penalized homes and businesses hiring undocumented labor. We could have enforced tax codes on all of the under the table money changing hands. We allowed entire industries to become dependent on unlawful cheap taxed labor. Today, we can't stop. Georgia tried to enforce above the board labor for one season and lost a harvest (https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/05/17/the-law-of-...). Cutting undocumented labor today would have disastrous consequences to our economy.

So, after decades of benefitting our economy, keeping food, hotels, restaurants, and numerous other service industries more affordable, we decide to start deporting? Hilarious. For all the talk of the "send them back" crowd, I don't think anyone is really thinking through what it means.

So yeah, I agree, we need to control illegal immigration. We also need to be realistic on the stupid situation we've created for ourselves by wanting cheap stuff.

1) Do you find your trust ("only place I post") in HN to be well-placed given what happened with this subthread? 2) >US, society has become so aggressively censorship-by-threat & political correctness oriented, I agree, but wouldn't you also agree that withdrawing your opinion "pre-emptively" contributes to observed censorship and tribalism through self-censorship?

What do you mean by "the left", and who do you consider to be part of it?

It's fairly vague (and I'm ok with that), just as my use of "right" in another post is. I'm going to continue using it even if it generates a silly over-reaction by some people on the left and right.

There's an aggressive coalition on the left that now likes to use labels as a control vector for stopping free speech (any speech they disagree with in fact). The major social media platforms for example have all taken up the cause and are beginning to shut down free speech (it'll get far worse yet, it'll become hyper restrictive), and nations such as Germany are doing the same.

The reason I ask is that it seems like you might be using a circular definition here. You say "the left likes to use labels to stop free speech", but have you just defined "the left" in your head to mean "anyone who uses labels to stop free speech"?

I do think using such vague terms in general is at best useless, but it's especially pointless when you redefine labels to fit whatever you're trying to argue against.

I don't think you are approaching this right. You are painting an entire group of people under the same brush... Also, feminism is promoting equality.

I disagree that feminism is promoting equality.

I think I'm approaching it exactly right.

Your response is conceptually exactly why I no longer post opinions as myself on social media now. If this were a personal discussion on Facebook or Twitter, the left's censorship/control attack wave would be rolling in right now, calling me countless labels (instead, here you'll just get downvotes, your life won't be ruined and your business won't be threatened with boycott for not being in favor of eg illegal immigration).

Because you don't want to hear others opinions.

No, it's because I'll get attacked for not agreeing with x y z position.

It's no longer acceptable to have discussions about such topics. It's no longer acceptable to just not stand in the way of such topics (I'm not against people being feminists for example, I don't care) - you must agree, or you're regarded as being against.

Unless you specifically agree with illegal immigration and feminism, then you are against them. That is the present approach taken by the left in the US (the right does it with various topics as well, such as gun control). We now live in an us-vs-them society, you have to choose a side or else.

Maybe I'm missing part of the thread, but who is attacking you?

This is a discussion forum and people are discussing the opinions you shared... because that's what happens on discussion forums.

Do you expect to only receive praise and agreement?

> Maybe I'm missing part of the thread, but who is attacking you?

I'm not being attacked on HN / in this thread. HN tends to be about 10x more civil than public social media.

I can't post any of what I said on here - none of which was very inflammatory - without practically enraging dozens of my Democrat/liberal/left-oriented (is there a PC term for that?) friends on eg Facebook. These are good people I'm talking about, and they now lose their minds at the drop of a hat on discussing these topics (post Trump, it has all gone into another gear). And if this conversation were being held on Twitter, I'd be getting death threats (or something close to it; maybe I'd just get called horrible names and proclaimed as being a racist Trump supporter etc) by now for not specifically being in favor of feminism / illegal immigration (as two examples).

It's not agreement I seek, I don't need it. I can't voice opinions about these subjects on public social media, as myself, without people being enraged about the discussion (and or possibly worse, people taking what I say out of context, or failing to understand what I'm arguing (either of their own fault or mine) etc), that response is a business risk that I can't tolerate.

> I can't post any of what I said on here - none of which was very inflammatory - without practically enraging dozens of my Democrat/liberal/left-oriented (is there a PC term for that?) friends on eg Facebook.

Do you not see the irony in this complaint? You're bemoaning the end of free-speech because people who disagree with you engage with the commentary that you broadcast on a platform for sharing speech. If you don't want to invite public commentary on your political opinions, don't broadcast them to the public. It doesn't matter what the opinion is, who is responding to it, or (short of threats) what they are saying in response, even if they are demonstrably and objectively incorrect; free-speech means other people are free to speak in response to your speech; period. And as an aside, if you want to limit the visibility of particular posts to a subset of individuals who respond within what you consider to be the acceptable range of discourse, Facebook does allow you to do this.

> These are good people I'm talking about, and they now lose their minds at the drop of a hat on discussing these topics (post Trump, it has all gone into another gear)

So what? Do you wish they would just stop expressing their opinions? Do you wish they'd just stop expressing their opinions on your posts? Do you wish they'd just be "more reasonable" in their opinions? Or is it more that you'd prefer they expressed their opinions in a way that makes you feel comfortable? What about their speech do you wish would change so that they would meet your standard for acceptable expression of their opinions?

> And if this conversation were being held on Twitter, I'd be getting death threats

This is a universal truth of the twitter cesspool regardless of the topic and has nothing to do with "PC" or "the left". I've seen plenty of rape and death threats directed towards feminists on twitter and I've seen my own kid addressed with death threats because of his opinion on PlayStation vs Xbox.

> I can't voice opinions about these subjects on public social media, as myself, without people being enraged about the discussion

Free-speech means you get to express your opinion, it doesn't mean you get to control how other people feel about the opinion you express.

Nobody wants to hear others opinions.

> Your response is conceptually exactly why I no longer post opinions as myself on social media now.

That's not a free-speech problem. In a discussion about free-speech, you broadcasted your particular personal opinions regarding notoriously controversial topics and castigate "the left" as anti-freespeech, and then when someone responds to you with a civil disagreement, you exclaim that is what's killing free speech. This is how free-speech works, it means that people can respond freely to the statements you made freely, where is the problem?

Adventured is right, about both feminism and censorship. I think the ERA would actually help men more than women. Right now it is much better to be a woman in america.

Feminism has more than accomplished its goals of equality. Women can do anything they want, yet they also get these benefits: If accused of a crime less likely to be convicted If they hit a man far less likely to be charged with harsh domestic violence laws If convicted, men get 60% longer sentences If another Vietnam happens, women will stay home while men are forced to get killed, get their arms and legs blown off in war. If they have a child out of wedlock they get free money from the government If there is a divorce, they get custody 80% of the time.

The reason men make more money is because on average, they have a higher iq than women (this is scientifically proven), because they have more natural drive than women, and because they have fewer emotional insecurities that prevent them from succeeding in the workplace.

Feminism has achieved equality of opportunity in every regard. Today it is no longer about equality of opportunity, but equality of results. If feminists are going to fight for equal pay, regardless of merit, they should also fight for mandatory longer prison times, and mandatory higher conviction rates just for being women in order to match men. Or if they think things should be decided on relative merit of the individual, then they should quit whining about being women. Everybody has strengths and weaknesses. Find your niche, instead of trying to win at someone else's and then cheating because you came in second and wanted first.

Edit: As for the dogmatic downvoters, why don't you at least present some sort of rebuttal against these facts, instead of a media-ingrained fear downvote?

This is the sort of generic ideological rant that we're trying to avoid here, and we ban accounts that use HN primarily for this purpose. So would you please stop posting like this to HN? Nothing good or new can come of it; these discussions are always the same and always become nasty. Boring and uncivil are the two sins on HN.

Dang, please help me understand. I was responding to the thread in the comments. How would have been a better way to express my thoughts in a HN appropriate way?

Feminism is not simple as that.

> People ask me sometimes, when — when do you think it will it be enough? When will there be enough women on the court? And my answer is when there are nine.

This is from Justice Ginsburg, and a widely shared quote by a lot of feminist articles. This claim feels pretty vindictive to me and definitely not about equality. In the other words, it is not about REDUCE the inequality, it is about REVERSE the inequality.

So it's fine if there are nine men in court but not nine women? I don't get your point. Shouldn't it not matter? You are also arguing that one persons opinion represents an entire group.

It's entirely possible for someone to maintain the position that neither of those situations is ideal.

First of all, they are currently 3 women at the supreme court.

But ideally, if equal, shouldn't the court, if we assume both gender are equal, split 50:50?

If you are advocating for opportunity equality, that is fine with me. But in reality, a lot of companies, as inspected by the media, seems like to hail a 50:50 gender split goal. Those are not compatible with each other.

> Feminism is not simple as that.

I never said it was simple and I fully recognize there are countless gradients of all sorts in feminism. I believe it's unnecessary as a concept. Pursuing and agreeing with the concept of equality nullifies feminism - that is my opinion. It's a very unpopular opinion with the left today. I've been having discussions about feminism for two decades online, there is hardly any conversational ground I haven't covered in the process.

The definition of feminism is "the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes" - that is fundamentally compatible with equality. You can claim that's not what feminism today is working towards, but that's simply untrue. Feminism hasn't changed to some kind of anti-male conspiracy, despite the ability for people on the internet to find stupid troll posts or the odd extremist saying "all men should be slaves"!

> You can claim that's not what feminism today is working towards, but that's simply untrue.

You can claim that's the definition of feminism, I believe what you're saying is untrue. I don't believe what you quoted is the definition of feminism - there are more likely almost as many definitions of feminism as there are feminists. I think it's absurd to claim that there is one definition given the rather elaborate diversity of belief on the matter just among feminists.

I take it you mean "I think what most feminist advocate isn't equality, but sexism against men" - that is not what the predominant message of feminism is today. As I see it, you are taking a vanishingly small minority of comments from extremists/trolls and extrapolating that all feminists believe it.

(Edited for more civility).

This kind of comment violates the site guidelines no matter how wrong the other person is. Moreover the entire subthread is off-topic as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703722. Please stop.

You are misunderstanding the quote. She's not saying that she wants there to always be nine female members of the SC like it had been with men for so long - rather, the proof of true equality would be when that happened by chance at some point (not sustained), and it wasn't a big deal. That's true equality when it comes to randomness - occasionally it'll be all one gender. If the answer is "half", then that could just be some level of intentional selection of women to reach a quota, which isn't equality.

Of course, as with anything, there are a very small number of people who call themselves feminists who are extremists who believe in sexism against men. That is a vanishingly small group, however, and mainstream feminism, even the more fringe wings, want equality, not revenge.

Your claim is just misrepresenting the ideology.