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Comment by lazyjones | Hacker News Reader

It's kinda nerdy and very clickbait-ish but sexist? Probably not, but who am I to judge. Old, white and male means I am not entitled to any opinion on such matters, by today's standards.

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Just because you’re “old, white and male” doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to have an opinion. Don’t let anybody make you feel like that.

I think it was obvious that he doesn't believe that and he's just playing the victim. Nobody in the comments has mentioned anything about white males not having an opinion, and this is a typical argument (and a strawman) that people use to derail the discussion.

No, it's not obvious. You should look at people with a more generous eye and with the benefit of doubt instead of throwing accusations left and right.

Sadly, he's quite on point.

Unless the person believes that old white men literally are not allowed to hold any opinion whatsoever on matters of sexism and that's the most plausible and popular view, then it clearly is both false and a strawman argument, so interpretation doesn't have much to do with it.

There are of course times when modern conversation around this devolve to people saying white men should just shut up, their opinions don't matter, etc. But since there are more defensible, reasonable versions of this (e.g., white men should be more tentative in opinions about discrimination given their relative lack of direct experience of being discriminated against, there are contexts when offering such opinions are inappropriate, etc.), it clearly is a strawman.

Old, white and male — we are probably both plenty entitled. But life is generally favorable to us, so we are often better off listening to those actually affected by this.

Is that to imply less privileged people should feel less obligated to listen or is that to imply more privileged people have less to contribute so they should default to listening? It seems highly unnecessary to devalue large categories of people based on the situations they were born into just to get across a point that listening to others is important.

The principle was merely that people who are not directly affected by X can particularly benefit from listening to people directly affected by X. It was even a supererogatory framing of the recommendation. But enjoy your high horse!

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