Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacalata | Hacker News Reader

The amount of hysteria on display by men in this article and elsewhere is ridiculous. What happened to the skeptical "treat each person as an individual" attitude that created "Not All Men"?

View on HN

Are you saying "hysteria" ironically?

But seriously, things are getting hugely chaotic. The only safe bet is keeping sexuality totally out of the workplace. But that doesn't mean isolation. As you say, you treat everyone the same. Because you really have no clue about their sexual orientation or status, issues, vulnerability, and so on.

Yes, I couldn't resist.

Why wouldn't you treat everyone the same?

Because half the population (or at least a considerable portion of that half) get's offended if I treat them the same as I would men.

For sure. My wife swears like a sailor now, but she still gets offended sometimes by my repertoire ;) And we've been married for decades. But there's a certain blend of formality and good cheer that's part of professional behavior.

Edit: My point is that I'd never talk that way in a professional context. Or even on HN.

Edit: Also that my wife has picked up bad habits from me.

I am skeptical that there is anything you could do that would never offend any men but would offend a significant percentage of women. Even more skeptical if we're restricting the scene to professional interactions.

I didn't say it would never offend men, but take a dirty joke as an example, it might offend men, but I'm drastically less likely to be written up by HR if a man is offended. Another one is the level of profanity that the different sexes are comfortable with. Another one would be making fun of someone's clothing, perfectly acceptable amongst friends.

> Even more skeptical if we're restricting the scene to professional interactions.

Not everything in the workplace is a professional interaction, or at least it never used to be. I don't know what it's supposed to be now, you have corporate wanting to do team building exercises and everyone to be one big family, we're still supposed to sign birthday cards and that sort of rubbish, yet you can't talk to people as you would friends and family.

Because you're attracted to some more than to others, maybe?

On certain things, you cannot treat people the same without considering their needs. A person in a wheelchair cannot climb a stair case.

You definitely want to treat people the same as much as possible.

sure, but we're not talking about someone with a disability. we're talking about men and women. why would you even make that comparison, given the context?

by the way, people with disabilities generally want to be treated equally, once accessibility has been reached.

Women are different due to cultural norms and have also different needs; for just one example, while both parents of new born kids might need paternity or maternity leave, women who give birth face a much more physiologically taxing experience than men who do not. You cannot merely treat everyone the same with a "for all" universal quantifier next to it because you'll end up discriminating against someone.

This isn't even a group or women or whatever issue, this is human interaction 101. Some people don't drink, some people don't smoke, some people don't like sex, some do. You can't accommodate everyone, but you should do what you can and are comfortable with and be sensitive for those you can't. Then you can treat people the same after that. So I don't think you disagree, it's just we might be defining the word "equally" differently.

> women who give birth face a much more physiologically taxing experience than men who do not.

Which is an excellent reason to give the men the same amount of paternity leave so they can look after the newborn while the mother recuperates!

I get your point in general, but that example is a case where giving men more time off is likely to lead better results for women, and a more egalitarian society in general. The argument: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/01/the-dad...

Ridiculous until you wake up one day and discover you no longer have a career.

The occasional occurrence of an unlikely event does not make it reasonable to arrange your life around avoiding it. See: kidnapping by a stranger, plane crashes, suddenly having a photo of yourself go viral on the internet.

> occasional occurrence

My reading of the newspaper suggests otherwise.

Your newspaper is reporting many instances of men with their career ruined by a false accusation? Those stories don't seem to make it to the New York Times, perhaps you should diversify your sources.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com