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Comment by Doubl | Hacker News Reader

Everyone gets knocked down and women are just as good at doing the knocking down.

The point is we've identified gender is used to knock people down a lot, that this particular angle seems to have little basis in fact, and so are trying to make people aware to stop this particular angle.

If we find more systematic ways in which people are getting knocked down, we should probably work on those, too.

The cure today, which is the enforcement of a set of beliefs on pain of shunning or job loss, is worse than the disease. For example the Connie St Louis fiasco

Not familiar with Connie St Louis. I see a twitter channel by that name. What happened? Curious to read a bit more, any pointers?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/201...

> gender is used to knock people down a lot

"Toxic masculinity" says hi. It's definitely a two-way street!

"Toxic masculinity" refers to a subset of masculinity that is harmful, e.g. saying things such as "you're not man enough to do x" to peer pressure someone. I feel like 90% of arguments surrounding that term are between people who interpret the definition differently.

It similar to when people talk about illegal immigrants. One group refers to a subset of immigrants, while the other interpret it as an attack on all immigrants and thus racism.

They are very poor words if the intention is to communicate and find agreement on each topic.

Ironically, the common attitude among some people is that "racism doesn't apply" to the male gender, because they're "toxic" and "hold all the power" anyway. Which sure does strike me as a fallacy of begging the question, but meh, whatever. Some people will never try to seriously change their mind; I don't view this as something that could be "fixed" in any way, and I respect free speech even when it doesn't provide me with an immediate advantage; so why should I even be expected to complain? What's there to complain about?

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