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Comment by jimbokun | Hacker News Reader

I think it's important to recognize the issues directly pertaining to equal treatment that are dominating much of the conversation about sex and gender today.

The right not to be grabbed or groped or touched without consenting, to be evaluated on ability to do the work and not on appearance, to have supervisors and coworkers focused on working together and not on how to date you.

These are all issues disproportionately impacting women, that are not requests for "equality of outcome" or that men and women are the same, and very much critical to addressing "equality of opportunity".

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A non charitable reading of my quickly formulated comment may have given the impression I believe that the need for real feminism is over. I'm lamenting the appropriation of the word by those that are cheapening it with nonsense.

On the one hand we have women in Iran facing real dangers to take off their veils. Then on the other we have this strange group that deny science and demand we believe men and women are identical. I also reject this pattern where women should measure and compare themselves to men, and shape themselves into men. Which seems very anti-feminist. You're fine to do it, but to label that feminist is (I believe) wrong.

>These are all issues disproportionately impacting women

That men are raised with the social expectation to not find problem and to not let something impact them is not to say that women are impacted more by it. With reference to non-consensual encounters, there is a great deal of bias that refuses to see men as victims and even encourages them to see being the victim as a beneficial event for them.

Yes, men are sometimes subject to unwanted physical contact, and are probably not taken as seriously if they complain about it.

But I would be very surprised if the overall number of men experiencing non-consensual touching was greater than the number of women.

It would not surprise me given the pervasiveness of the double standard. I've seen a old woman directly sexually assault a young boy in public and no one call her out on it. It was treated as a joke and even I took a few moments to realize just how differently I reacted compared to if we reversed the genders. The boy played it off as a joke because that is what he was conditioned to do, and it was another incident that will never be reported in any sort of reporting.

There are also numerous self reports by bouncers in bars that point out how bad it gets and the extent of the double standard.

Or consider the case of celebrities openly admitting to such crimes of recent and the vast difference in social reaction based on the gender of the celebrity.

I would very much like to see some evidence to your claim, other than anecdotal.

You have unstated assumptions here. Are you aware that most statistics of victimization intentionally discard data from people who are incarcerated?

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