Hacker News Reader

Comment by munificent | Hacker News Reader

> You can enjoy beer and music and stuff without getting into a dick measuring contest.

Sure, and most do, across genders.

> If that’s their way of enjoying things, then what’s so bad about it?

Every act tends to have social/economic implications that affect how others participate, even if unintentional. Walk into a bar now, and often eight out of the ten taps are high IBU IPAs. Fewer choices for people that aren't into the hops competition.

Some people will be rude to others who don't want to play the competitive game.

> (Why this gendered insulting is okay when it’s aimed against men, I don’t know.)

Men collectively have enough power to handle a funny critical term without risk of being marginalized.

View on HN

>> (Why this gendered insulting is okay when it’s aimed against men, I don’t know.)

> Men collectively have enough power to handle a funny critical term without risk of being marginalized.

What does men collectively have enough power even mean? It's not like all the men in the world work together to decide the fate of all the poor, powerless women. Where is black men's power? Where is the homeless white men's power? And why should risk of being marginalized factor into it? Insulting a very large fraction of humanity for the actions of a small subset shouldn't be OK no matter who it is. Would insulting all Muslims for the actions of a few fringe sects be OK? I mean, they should collectively have enough power to handle it, they even run whole countries!

Decry the actions of bros all you want, but why expand that to saying all men do this as "mentrification" implies? Doing so is both inaccurate and hurtful to many people for no reason other than feeling smug that some man (who most likely isn't very privileged) finally got their comeuppance.

I don't think it implies that all men do this at all. It also seems like a much more palatable expression/term than "dick-measuring contest".

But it seems to collectively place the blame on all men, rather than the minority who are interested in dick-measuring contests.

And not only is this unfair, it’s silly. Brewing has always been an almost exclusively male hobby, the rise of the hop nerd is nothing to do with sex at all, contrary to what the word might imply.

I would also be willing to believe that the, for lack of a better term, dick-measuring, isn't something that men inherently do more; we're just primed to see it that way due to sexist stereotypes. And/or they get away with it more easily 'cuz hegemony.

Evidences:

At quilting shows, numeric boasting is also common - number of hours, number of pieces, number of spools of thread, I've even seen a count of the number of broken quilting needles.

Carbon fiber knitting needles are a thing. I own some. The packaging talks about how carbon fiber is also used in aerospace. (In case, I dunno, you need to get those puppies moving through the air really fast, maybe?)

My grandmother's approach to baking Christmas cookies.

(That said, MENTRIFICATION is a hilarious term, I chuckled out loud, and I will be using it in the future, with only moderate fear that doing so will emasculate me or invert the patriarchy, and minor hope that people who like to complain about political correctness will be offended on political grounds.)

The point is that this is a general trend in culture not specifically brewing. That’s why they ended with the example of knitting, they even included the parenthetical disclaimer that it’s not always men.

Mentrification is just a clever play on words.

The actual observation definitely rings true for me. I remember as a middle schooler not wanting to admit i was learning guitar until i was ’good enough’.

I think this is definitely tied to identity. Something that you can work at and see demonstrable progress is comforting in a way, but i can see how it easily leads to passion as competition.

Is this the "men is short for bogeymen and thus not the same as any other collectivisation"-argument or an argument that they did not mean what they said?

Seems like being a man is necessary, but not sufficient to be a part of mentrificafion. Just like gentrification doesn’t imply that all the gentry are involved in it.

But mostly it’s a pun.

I hereby exert my collective power and order you to stop using words that start with man, except for management and manual.

Is that... mandatory?

> Men collectively have enough power to handle a funny critical term without risk of being marginalized

Even to the extent this is true, it’s a poisonous attitude, responsible for a lot of acrimony in society today, and I urge you to reconsider it.

The attitude of “you can punch up but not down” leads to a lot more punching, especially when members of the group you’ve declared as “up” start getting sick of being punched and decide to punch back.

Everyone likes to feel like they are above some other class of people. 'Nazis', FWMs, and Politicians must not even be human, much less deserving of baseline human respect or rights, based on the comments I see here. Its a huge problem.

You can't 'hate on hate' without becoming the hater you hated.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com