I was mistaken for a call girl
drugstoreculture.com
drugstoreculture.com
An old woman would definitely have the privilege of that assumption. An old man wouldn't.
Welcome to society, it will never be perfect and that's ok. Trying to turn the dials and create a perfect one is the stuff of comic book villains. It looks like the west has solved so much that it is starting to go backwards. In the third world we have actual cases of families forcing daughters to stay home or worse, get married at 17. Give me a break with this Nerf ball stuff.
Uh... This happens in the US too.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-12-29/us-has-forced-child-m...
The "all men are rapists" sexism is really getting to us too. I don't think I'm the only one.
I've come to the conclusion that life sucks in some way to some degree for everyone, everywhere and this is necessarily the case.
When you bend something into a shape that suits you it is bent out of shape for someone else. She even states it when she says now men are sometimes avoiding being alone with Women because it represents a risk they don't want to take.
It's the hard problem of delineation. We all need to take a little bit of crap in our lives but it's close to impossible to delineate what the parameters for yourself and others are such that everyone is taking the minimum amount of crap possible and the system is also stable.
Some time ago, there was this news article - an old man was turned away from a park, because he was alone and because everyone else in the park were "a family with kids" and they won't feel comfortable with a "single old man by himself" (don't remember the exact words, but this is the gist of it).
It gets worse. A woman with her son (just a kid) was asked by other moms to leave, because they were all mums with daughters and she was the only one with a son. I don't get the logic at all.
Society is weird...
I don't know if there is a easy solution to advance society other than the passage of time and I think it's unfortunate people face these daily injustices. Thoughts?
> Those women who were complicit in hashtag crimes have actually undermined the cause, taken us back years in our endeavor to be taken seriously.
The people fighting to prevent sexual attacks would generally also acknowledge other areas for improvement. Saying that you have different priorities is acceptable. But denying their priorities is not. That they are causing more sexism elsewhere is a long shot. It is not even connected to the main story.
At a fundamental level the political winds are that of retaliation for past grievances. Not just immediate grievances with lving victims, but all grievances across recorded history, with no definite end-game.
This creates a politically charged atmosphere that polarizes players to exist in two camps, primed for conflict intended to escalate beyond a stated goal of fairness.
Now you have bitter, uncompromising rivals who will not negotiate, striving to enforce inflexible terms and who benefits? Those external to the fight. Those not dragged down and injured by the grudge match.
Pay attention to the ones looking for a fight, trace that back to those who egg them on, and a picture develops about what’s really going on.
Where there’s an “us versus them” tone, the divide and conquer tactic can be found.
Years of setback may be true, if enemies are alert and opting not only to defend, but actively destroy dissent and redouble dominance.
The war being fought isn’t something camparable to the abolition of slavery. To call our current climate tantamount to one of slavery is hyperbolic without question.
I noticed this after learning Japanese and then listening to how Asians talk about other Asians and then checked what the other sides were saying and I was like... Oh man... this is vicious. Then I noticed the same thing in other countries that share borders, there are cases where they are sworn enemies or have bad blood because of beefs going back hundreds of thousands of years. It's amazing.
What if the narrative villifies the less charismatic individual sufficiently?
Instead of the manager arriving to rescue other customers, the manager plays the role of a tool.
What if the other customers used the manager as a tool, and being a dimwitted jerk, he took the cue as an opportunity to engaging misanthropic behavior. Other girls at the bar wanted to cause harm to someone they didn’t like the looks of, so they complain to the manager, craft a lie, and the manager takes the bait, enforcing the will of malicious tattletales?
Or, what if the manager is actually operating the bar as a front for a nearby hotel brothel, and at the request of a pimp, ousted an unfamiliar face that seemed to be a threat to business?
Would these versions be juicy enough to satisfy a quest for truth?
Bottom line is there is a decent amount of high end prostitution around high end hotels near midtown during the weekdays.
It is nearly invisible which is why she didn't notice it for years. Now that I have told you, you will probably start to see the pay-for-play scene. It isn't huge, but it exists in the business traveller world.
It sucks that she got mixed in with it. That being said, it is a small number of women and men in that scene, it has a flavor of consent, and I personally think other harassment issues are a much broader problem to worry about.
As a guy, the pay-for-play scene is often super annoying. Get approached, have an hour conversation, then get asked for money. Just feels irritating to have a conversation that was financially motivated. The bars then start policing it... like not allowing the girls to approach men, e.g. making them sit at tables.
I know a bit too much about this scene because I have a policy against any shaming of sex workers. Thus after rejecting their pay-for-play offer, I often end up in a conversation about their lives and work. I make it clear that I don't look down on them.
I suppose the possible thing missing from the story is that she is a healthy adultly woman that enjoyed having sex and went home with interesting and attractive men from the bar. Normal thing to do, especially if you don't have time for a relationship because you are splitting continents. The bar could have misread the situation.
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/police-called-after-man-...
People make judgments about other people. They base them on a mixture of accurate, incomplete and inaccurate data. They base them on their own biases and perceptions. They base them on their own agendas and lack of time to explain them.
These events aren’t article worthy.
But should everyone really just shut up about it and accept it? If everything can’t be perfect, we shouldn’t try to improve anything?
But should everyone really just shut up about it and accept it?
If it’s something significant, then deal with it. If it’s something insignificant, then yes it’s better to move on.
You could spend your entire life correcting people’s misconceptions about you and people will still have misconceptions about you.
They are worth us reading and thinking about, because it helps remind us that while our assumptions allow us to operate fairly efficiently as humans in a complex world, they also need to be tested periodically - especially where our assumptions can negatively affect others.
Because it's not about men as an enemy. It's about people saying that they too have been effected by sexual harassment, assault or abuse. It's someone saying, "That happened to me, too."
If it feel's pervasive enough to be a campaign, instead of a movement, that says more about our culture's response, or lack thereof, to sexual misconduct then it does about men.
I think "MeToo" goes beyond simply exposing particular situations. It is also attempting to explain those cases of abuse by the gender of the perpetrator, as if it was the ultimate cause. Maybe the particular individual is an asshole, but not the whole category. Maybe that guy that "mansplains" things is condescending with everyone. I think that too quick generalization and broad accusation creates resentment and diminishes the potential of support from both sides.
I wish things were written like "many persons have been called out" instead of "many men have been called out", because the latter implies that only men can be, and also even if logically false it is easy to go from A => B to B => A in the eyes of opinion.
Which situation -- do you mean "being harassed"? I'm pretty sure you do, as it is quite safe to assume that any woman you encounter has been harassed at some point in her life. The only question is how severely and how long ago, which still does not take away the effect on her emotions.
Where a man is allowed to eat at a bar but a woman is not?
Particularly in the case of restaurants and businesses choosing not to provide service to homosexuals, it depends on the state. But it also still depends on the courts to enforce or clarify rules.
Unfortunately what this all means is that unless someone is looking for a potentially lengthy and costly legal fight, the rules don't matter.
The flipside of this is that even if there are rules, a motivated litigant can make it not worth the opponent's time or money to fight.
In this specific case, the best way to get "justice" would be to push a publicity campaign to make the restaurant feel pressure and change its ways. But that too requires effort and time to do, and success is iffy. Keep in mind that it's NYC, and there are more diners than good restaurants usually. So if she gets angry, and even if she gets a few thousand other people angry, that restaurant still probably won't suffer.
srceenshot of page 15, showing older dupes with less votes above: https://i.imgur.com/ibnV65s.png
edit: now it's gone from p15
edit2: if this would have been transparently flagged as off-topic for HN I'd understand. But given the content of the article this is sadly ironic, I really hope there is a "mechanical" explanation for this.
That's why I generally read HN through http://hckrnews.com/, they show all frontpage items sorted chronologically.
If it was flagged I'd still see it, no? (I have that enabled)
edit: now it shows as [flagged] [dead]
edit2: and back on the front-page again, thanks for undoing this mods
edit3: now vanished (even from "new"). weird mechanics or a mod-battle :) ?
edit4: I'll take the down-votes with pride
I've only flagged obvious spam and a dangerous pseudoscience article. And after that, I couldn't flag anymore, so I guess I'm not in sync with the powers that be.
I think it is just necessary to accept that HN is imperfect, only one venue, and reflects the biases of its users to a significant degree. It is a shame those biases are not more transparently revealed.
If you want to see things that people you respect recommend, go to twitter and curate your feed. Although the constant reordering and sometimes-showing and so on is even worse on twitter.
If we speak of biases that way, then I'm not sure there's anything outside of bias. This site has a bias towards a particular kind of discourse. It's not that Twitter doesn't have discourse, but it's a different style. Topics like this one can be quite controversial and flamewar-style, and Hacker News readers have a bias against flamewars. It's not that flamewars aren't discourse, but it's not our preference here.
Yes, it's only one venue, and it does reflect its users (and its history and its conventions and its table-based layout, etc.). How could it be any other way? Something that's a detriment to thoughtfulness and civility is when we project our own opinions onto the canvas of “bias” constituting the mechanisms of discussion which are invariably present. It's never what we think, and always a projection.
This is supported by the fact that everyone perceives moderation, flagging, etc. to be in support of the opposite side. Has anyone ever complained, “Boy, this really confirms my existing view without adequately representing what I disagree with. How biased!”.
Sorry for the rant! I'm of course generalizing and addressing more than you've actually said.
I'm fine with bias, it is as you point out, expected and unavoidable. It is more obvious who likes/dislikes what on twitter, though they keep making that harder to determine analytically. I guess the problem boils down to there being no sense of who is voting one way or the other, and would you respect those people? Like, I'm not going to care if Jacob Wohl downvotes something, or if a bunch of Wohlites (or Chomskyists for that matter) are angry, but how can you tell?
As to articles specifically related to gender and women, I would say HN has a problem. It is up to HN owners to decide whether to damp down the jerk responses, the flagging, etc.
I prefer HN posts because they don't have to be absurdley short, and there are no memes. How I hate memes. Though the lack of respect for humour and wit really diminishes discourse.
As said, I'd understand a flagging because of "off-topic" or something.
And while I strongly oppose a "no-politics" policy, even that would be fair game if enforced transparently.
I replied in part because I post as openly female and have gone through periods where I paid a lot of attention to what happened to articles on sexism or from a woman's point of view etc. Quality of writing matters a great deal on sensitive topics and good titles matter a whole lot. This title is actually fairly click bait and technically a violation of HN policy.
btw: I just noticed I don't read the names when reading comments.
I think the best response is basically that HN is not Reddit, and that's how most people here want it, though many of us (including me) are frequent Reddit users too. Different sites for different purposes.
I'm not saying it's fair. I'm just saying they may have valid reasons for the policy of cracking down on sex workers and they don't need to have actually mistaken her for a sex worker per se to decide this policy applies to her.
I've already allowed as how it isn't fair. Is there some greater point here?
> I'm just saying they may have valid reasons for the policy
without any caveat about how this policy was applied only to women.
I don't know if it was your intent to come across that way or not, but that is how I read it.
The conclusion that she was actually mistaken for a call girl seems shaky.
I did give a proviso that I wasn't saying it was fair. So I don't know where you are getting this idea that I'm justifying sexism.
That she was "simply been caught by a policy designed to address the issue" is pretty clear. The issue is that this policy is discriminatory. And in a way that would fall foul of sex discrimination laws a whole lot of places.
> So I don't know where you are getting this idea that I'm justifying sexism.
You suggested they may have valid reasons for a discriminatory policy. To me that reads like a pretty clear cut justification. If you don't think that's a valid reason for discriminating after all, then my apologies.
Sex work happens to typically be done by women more than men. I've never been to a restaurant that didn't have a sign posted saying "We reserve the right to refuse service." Given that general policy, they may have been cutting her slack to let her eat there.
While homeless, I spent a lot of time in public spaces. Most of them have policies that pets are not allowed, but service animals are. Most homeless people with pets claimed they were service animals. Establishments were generally legally barred from asking for proof.
No policy is foolproof. There will always be exceptions to any rule and they routinely complain loudly about it, often while not having either sympathy for the very real problems involved nor a better solution.
That doesn't mean I'm justifying sexism.
I'm a writer. I was primarily critiquing the click bait title, insufficient evidence that they actually believed her to be a call girl and poor construction of the piece.
But I'll drop it. It's late. I'm tired. Whatever.
Sometimes, I prefave it to try to avoid that. Sometimes, I don't. This time, I didn't. (shrug)
Now replace the correlation with other undesirable traits, like being a thief and having a certain skin colour.
Do you still call that a 'blunt tool to crack down on issues that don't necessarily apply to each individual' or can we just call that racial discrimination and agree no such tools should be applied?
The idea it's okay for your daughter, wife, mother etc to be denied a seat, where you can sit alone, because she's a priori categorised as a sex worker merely because of gender, is pretty insane to me. Of course your personal relationship shouldn't matter, but maybe it hits home a little bit more like this.
The whole idea about discrimination is that people are judged not on the basis of their own behaviour, but the behaviour (or stereotypical views of such) of a group they (often involuntarily) belong to. And that's inherently unfair.
Instead we should always try to make a fair assessment of the individual. Of course we use mental shortcuts that can be discriminatory, but we always have to try and allow recourse. That's why a 60 year old tends not to be hired as a security guard, because they lack the fitness. That tends to be viewed as reasonable age discrimination, but only in the context of explaining the underlying assumption, that age determines fitness, and that this assumption is not challenged by the applicant. But if the 60 year old can demonstrate sufficient fitness and challenges the assumption, denying the job based on age is no longer lawful. In short, the assumption must be reasonable, must be made clear, and must not be challenged.
I can imagine the owner's worry, and that he profiled her based on mental shortcuts. But if she then demonstrates she is not a sex worker, denying her a seat anyway is silly. Let's not forget, she came there for years. If she came with colleagues, she'd leave with them. If she came alone, she'd leave alone. She never engaged anyone else. The first thing you'd do is have an honest conversation and see if your assumptions are even correct in the first place. In this case they went straight to applying a policy based on a wrongful assumption, and then denied any recourse or apologies once they were given ample indications to be incorrect in their assumptions.
In this case, the assumption was made, was somewhat unreasonable given her familiarity with the staff (knowing faces, names), was not made clear initially, and was not allowed to be challenged. That's sex discrimination, a case handled incorrectly and it's not ok.
It's a click bait title. She may not have been mistaken for a call girl. The anecdote is told to try to introduce opinions about how the death by a thousand cuts is a larger problem than actual sexual assault. The piece isn't that well written overall.
I realize and stated in my very first comment that it isn't fair. Assertions that I'm saying sexism is totes fine seem wildly out of line to my mind.
I'm not defending the owner's decision, but the problem with this is... other patrons might still consider her one, and they might think/tell friends "avoid that restaurant for your family dinner, escorts hang around there!". She's not just condemning the owner, but probably many in society who still have the same mental shortcut.
And as long as people in your thought experiment have zero consideration for me, I wonder, why should I be considered toward their bigotry? Because the conviction thay alone women must be escort is exactly that.
The example in former paragraph is quite relevant to me, because apparently stereotype people openly express here (sometimes as joke sometimes serioisly) is that women are often late. Come soon, understand that you are escort, come minute late you confirm stereotype.
/s
So the sensible approach here is, to ban men from bars.
Doesn't sound so reasonable now, does it?
We both know, there would be outrage if men were so profiled (by restricting their rights wholesale). To ignore this part of the issue is disingenuous.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18946801
I also wasn't at any point suggesting it was okay. I posted several clarifications concerning that detail while new comments to the same effect continued to pour in, some of them snarky one liners.
I don't know what's going on here, but it's probably not what you and others are claiming is going on.
Remember women couldn't buy property back in the 1970's, for plausible reasons (most didn't have jobs so no cash flow). Its that fresh in some folks' minds.
Hypothetically and theoretically standing up for the author's right to sit at the bar and acting like my remarks on HN somehow undermine her rights while dozens of comments pile on to uncreatively beat a dead horse and say the same thing to me over and over and over is a great tactic for shutting women up on HN while pretending we are all doing the opposite.
Sexism, racism and other social ills tend to be kept alive by such events while the participants believe they are part of the solution, not part of the problem.
I'm not accusing anyone of conscious, intentional malice aforethought. I'm just trying to describe a common social phenomenon.
Have a great day.
If you want to be rational about it, the information you need to make a decision is not limited to how many hookers sit alone at a bar, but also how many hookers there are in the general population. If that number is low, then you have no good reason to assume that a woman sitting alone at a bar is a hooker, and therefore no good reason to stop women from sitting alone at a bar.
That's Baye's rule, right? What's the probability that a woman is a hooker given that she's sitting alone at the bar? It's the probability that a woman will be sitting alone at a bar given that she's a hooker, weighted by the probability that any woman is a hooker, normalised by the probability any woman will sit alone at a bar.
Nerds should know those things, if nothing else, to avoid many awkward conversations: "Why do you want to know how much my spaghetti carbonara cost?".
I only noticed that it's odd and began paying attention to other women in eating establishments because I was getting weird reactions from people.
/Anecdata to feed your hypothetical algorithm
Perhaps they mostly just have more confidence in going out alone.
I didn't pay attention beyond that. It's not some formal study with records, etc.
I noticed this watching a lot of those hidden camera shows with dodgy repair men. They know they are indeed crooked but get all in your face "are you accusing me of being a liar? That's outrageous!".
Life is impossible.
The problem with citizens of developed countries or those with rich background is, they haven't seen how real problems look like.
They usually cry for very silly things.
Things cannot be perfect.
The more woman ask for equality, the more alone they are going to end up, because men feel fearful even for approaching, who knowns what kind of mentality the other person have.
Discriminatory divorce laws keep men from marrying. I see this very openly.
Overcorrection with MeToo will make many men hesitate to interact with a woman if he gets a vibe that she might misread his actions. It will also decrease interactions by men who planned on harrassing her though.
She says no, but very few would admit. Either way, maybe they don't even like single, pretty women looking for their "knight in shining armor" at an expensive restaurant. It ruins their image and they don't that kind of a crowd. Just like they would not guys coming at the bar laughing and screaming with a couple of escorts.
Not exactly sexual discrimination, as they'd almost certainly ban guys that are touchy feely with female guests. More like trying to preserve their reputation and business, false positives and all. You can't really ask to see their Whatsapp or FB messages to investigate...
Of course it is sexual discrimination. What more is, you're skating close to it yourself by equating a woman eating quietly by herself with a guy being "touchy feely with female guests". If she was being touchy feely with male guests, and that was the justification, then that would have been an entirely different scenario.
You go on to compare it to guys "coming at the bar laughing and screaming with a couple of escorts".
Again you miss the point: If they set policies for conduct, such as "don't get touchy feely with the guests or you'll get sent to a table" or "no laughing and screaming at the bar", it'd be fine and not discriminatory.
But when they send women to tables but allow men to continue eating at the bar, it is very clear cut. I don't know if it is illegal in New York, but that clear discrimination certainly would be many other places.
Right there, that’s sexual discrimination! You can’t have one rule for single men and another for single women.
Ummm...after 4 years of going there. I have no dog in this race just don't buy the worst thing here. Maybe they misjudged, maybe she lead them to believe otherwise...whatever. But maybe they just don't want people bothered at the bar by the opposite sex (or whatever they enjoy.) Some let ladies drink free to attract guys to the bar, some don't, and maybe pull the trigger too fast.
The callgirl thing is tricky. No one knows for sure unless they're there when you ask for the money? What if...she behaved like one? Maybe she was looking to meet a guy not have sex for money, but then, they judged it.