Comment by jlebar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jlebar | Hacker News Reader

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It sounds like you're angry because you want the autonomy to choose not to think about social justice issues (at least at work), and you feel like that choice is being taken away from you by people who enact things like codes of conduct. Now it's institutionally everyone's responsibility to think about these things, so if I want to be part of this institution, I no longer have this choice.

Is that right?

What do you think about people who say, I'm a woman, and/or I'm black, and/or I'm gay, and/or I'm trans, and/or I'm disabled, and/or I have a mental illness. I also just want to sit heads-down and code next to you and not think about what I "am", but unfortunately -- perhaps, invisibly to you -- people are doing things which prevent me from being able to do that. A code of conduct moves us a bit closer towards "equality of having to think about social justice", in that I have to think about it a bit less, in exchange for your thinking about it a bit more.

I am some of those things, and I want that fact to be utterly ignored in a professional context.

Someone who is unintentionally unkind will receive a quiet word better than a hundred codes of conduct. That's how you change hearts and minds.

I agree that codes of conduct aren't an effective way of changing hearts and minds.

I wonder if you think that CoCs -- or more generally, rules -- have other legitimate purposes?

>What do you think about people who say, I'm a woman, and/or I'm black, and/or I'm gay, and/or I'm trans, and/or I'm disabled, and/or I have a mental illness. I also just want to sit heads-down and code next to you and not think about what I "am", but unfortunately -- perhaps, invisibly to you -- people are doing things which prevent me from being able to do that. A code of conduct moves us a bit closer towards "equality of having to think about social justice", in that I have to think about it a bit less, in exchange for your thinking about it a bit more.

What do I think about those people? I think they're insufferably bossy people who insult me by telling me what I need to think about more.

So, you're happy if people get discriminated against but not for those people to ask you to think about it?

> So, you're happy if people get discriminated against but not for those people to ask you to think about it?

This is a typical SJW non-argument, built atop a non-sequitur. Implying that I'm happy that people get discriminated against, while offering no logic to back it up. I disagree with you, therefore I am a bad person with bad motives. And that's what's driving this whole SJW-CoC movement.

The post you were responding to asked "what if I am being discriminated against? what do you say to me?" You respond that you find them bossy and insufferable. Unless those observations are inaccurate I struggle to see how you take issue with the question I asked. It certainly sounds from your own words that you do not care about people being discriminated against.

>The post you were responding to asked "what if I am being discriminated against? what do you say to me?" You respond that you find them bossy and insufferable. Unless those observations are inaccurate I struggle to see how you take issue with the question I asked.

I don't take issue with it. I responded with the answer it merited.

>It certainly sounds from your own words that you do not care about people being discriminated against.

Uh, no. I have not seen any evidence to support that discrimination against women or minorities in tech is pervasive. Quite the opposite, in fact. People keep making that claim, however, expecting it to be uncritically accepted at face value. And those who don't, well, they must just be one of those bad people who are happy to see people get discriminated against.

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