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Comment by tachyoff | Hacker News Reader

I can see the Buzzfeed story now: “White Tech Bro Rudely Interrupts Women To Mansplain Something”. There is absolutely a chilling effect. I mean, do you want men to approach you when you’re having a conversation or do you want them to stay away from your space? At this point, it’s easiest to just retreat and not talk to people. At least then you don’t risk becoming a hashtag.

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Seems like you've presented a false dichotomy.

It's of course rude to insert yourself into many conversations. That's just a social convention.

Here's a catch-22 comment from elsewhere on this post:

> Avoiding women in workplace is essentially sexist. And for non-sexists there is no reason to do so.

So you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Given how easy it is for public opinion to shift, I certainly wouldn't want to take that chance. Who would want to interact with people like that in a professional setting? I wouldn't, and I try not to.

It's very unlikely to get blamed for polite respectful attention to females if you don't confuse it with any shades of sexist moves. You don't apply this logic to men, which is sexist, even considering that male jerks are a far more often thing than female ones. So why you just dont't stop contacting them first?

I think the point they're trying to make is that the risk is close to zero for this for a straight male approaching other men, and that what you call "unlikely" is still likely enough with such a severe degree that the positive upside on such interactions is dwindling.

Why bother about side effects that are unavoidable but statistically insignificant? You can say it about any type of cryme that you can be wrongfully accused of it. So what do you suggest, gust stop punishing any crimes because of it and go back to chaos? These cases are just not a valid argument. Sexism should be punished and should be stopped, side effects shouldn't stay in the way of measures against it. Our whole legal system works like that, why is it suddenly a problem exclusively when it comes to dealing with sexism.

The issue isnt that the group is jerks (which is easy, you just stop and move on) but that they may bring down career ending social attacks on you. Unlikely with males even if superjerks.

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