Hacker News Reader

Comment by SandersAK | Hacker News Reader

Her work has had profound impact and I’m excited to read her book.

It’s amazing to still see the ramifications of her work today.

For example, in this very thread it shows just how latent misogyny is in the majority of the community. It’s a special sort of myopia dressed up as factual rational discussion but her work exposes that sentiment for what it is: fear of change, fear of women, fear of losing power over women, and the insecurity of emasculated men who work in power systems that encourage them to kick down.

View on HN

> Her work has had profound impact

I don't see it, what actually changed? Uber changed a lot, but that doesn't matter if you don't work at Uber. The only thing we learned is that investors and customers doesn't care, Uber is doing better than ever and the people who caused the problems got extremely rich in the process.

> this very thread it shows just how latent misogyny is in the majority of the community

Majority of what community? Are you noticing which comments are getting voted high, and which ones are downvoted into nothingness?

This community. Tech. HN.

Sometimes these discussions, as here, go relatively well. But that's relative. There's still a lot of misogynist nonsense, both subtle and blatant, and I can watch my antisexist posts get voted up and down. But quite often they go poorly. That's something that's easy to miss if one isn't intentionally antisexist. And since sexism is something guys can ignore if we want, it's especially easy for us to miss it.

My experience here on HN, over the recent past few years, has only ever been consistent with this thread. Anything that could possibly be interpreted or misinterpreted as sexist gets voted down into oblivion. As do any defenders on abstract principles, or who take neutral stances.

This very comment of mine could be interpreted suspiciously as insufficiently antisexist, and be downvoted too.

Further, I use HN as a proxy for the general attitudes of the tech industry.

My experience is different. I submit that maybe you are only noticing what you're noticing. People who aren't directly affected by systemic oppression rarely notice it as much as people who are, if only because for the latter group success and even survival depends on being very alert the fine details.

> For example, in this very thread

Can you provide quotes and/or links to examples?

Turn on the ability to view flagged comments and scroll down.

So 1 comment with 17 negative responses in a full thread of 36 comments is "the majority of the community?

That's kind of the part that really surprised me. That it exists, OK, but "the majority" in this thread? I feel like on the contrary, in the scope of this thread, it is a tiny minority.

Edit: Since I can't reply to the comment below. By "17 negative responses" I meant negative to the one "bad" comment.

> Edit: Since I can't reply to the comment below

For future reference, if you really need to reply to a comment before the lockout on immediate replies times out, click on the timestamp on the comment. That brings you to a view of the comment that lets you reply sooner. That view either has no lockout, or the lockout is mere seconds.

Thanks! That's good to know. Regardless, for this occurrence it was probably better for me to edit and be a bit more specific :)

17 out of 53 is just a hair shy of 33%. That's not "tiny".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com