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Comment by 1123581321 | Hacker News Reader

Sincere question: when I read this article, it had this sentence: “Unwilling or perhaps unable to accept that a woman wrote a breakthrough legal text, they keep talking about bearded dudes.”

Is “dudes” acceptable in NYT’s style guide now? The term seemed incongruous either way.

To reiterate, I am only asking about the term “dudes” and only quoted the whole sentence for context.

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That whole sentence seemed downright offensive and incongruous to me. Nowhere in the article was any evidence presented that objection to her ideas was based on her gender. But still the author feels the need to project that belief by demeaning the words of men as "bearded dudes".

When we come to a point where one group of people is not allowed to critique the ideas of another group of people because it is socially acceptable to demean those critics based on their gender makes me think we're doing something wrong.

Edit: For people that downvoted me, or a lot of the other comments about this sentence, I would like to know why.

I also thought it was an incongruous/bizarre sentence (what men are they even referring to?), because the context isn't explained until much further down.

But then it does make sense -- it refers explicitly to this cover [1] and the content within ("Battle of the Beards"), where "bearded dude" really does feel like an appropriate description. So I'd call it bad article organization but not a style problem.

[1] https://www.competitionpolicyinternational.com/wp-content/up...

I saw that. I understand use of the word bearded, given the cover, if not the authors (a woman, a bearded man and a clean-shaven man.) I am specifically wondering about the NYT allowing the word “dudes” since it seems to be used as slang for men and not as a term necessary to describe the criticism.

I, like some other commenters, objected to that sentence, but now after understanding the context about the linked article further down I think I get it now, and I agree I hope it's just how some reorganization during editing that made its meaning confusing.

I think "bearded dudes" is used specifically because the article was named "Hipster Antitrust", i.e. "dudes" being used to highlight the way the word "hipster" was used to ridicule Lina Khan's ideas in the first place.

I think I’m questioning the idea that portraying a bearded hipster is portraying a “dude” specifically, rather than a “man” (more formal than the reported article) or even just a “hipster” (would be a repetitive use.) Was it that they could not come up with another synonym and the NYT made an exception, or does the NYT generally allow a term like that now?

I’m also curious about whether the NYT has changed its policy of adopting a source’s language style to report on it (just for reporting, as an op-ed has different standards and already allows this.) That seems like a new development, but I’m not a daily reader of the whole newspaper.

As journalistic integrity degrades so does general comportment it seems.

I've noticed a lot of juvenile or outright vulgar language choice in reporting lately, as journalists are abandoning any effort to appear professional or dispassionate.

Also, is there any indication that anyone has problems with the paper because it was published by a woman?

https://lareviewofbooks-org-cgwbfgl6lklqqj3f4t3.netdna-ssl.c...

mmm, kinda seems like you're trying to attack the argument by going after a trivial part of it.

There are other threads if you’d like to discuss the merits of the argument.

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