How is gender bias, discrimination and online harassment US politics? Can you point out something in this discussion to me that gives you the impression that this is mainly about US politics? Because I was not under that impression at all.
From the perspective of where I live (Eastern Europe):
"Black lives matter" - We have very few black people living here. And very few problems with police in general. When something bad happens it typically happens to the police, not by the police.
"Racism" - we have no history of slavery nor racism, except being subjected to it. Even more - originally the word "slave" was derived from the word "slav".
"Sexism in tech" - there is no sexism in tech here. Tech is not even a prestigious field. People want to work in law, medicine and finance. Some can even be quite ashamed to admit they work in a technical field.
"Transphobia" - even such things as thinking about "sex" and "gender" as different concepts are quite US specific. i.e. where I live we typically refer to people by their sex, and don't even have a term for a separate concept like gender.
Yet these things are so pervasive on the internet. People even post their pronouns on twitter and (in this case) fill their GitHub profiles with that stuff. They can do it of course, it might even be a good thing to do. But I do not think this deserves a front page of HN. Hence why I am glad it was flagged.
The author of the article is not trying to promote a political agenda, asking you to support "cause A" or "cause B", they are merely trying to document a traumatizing experience that they have had.
And even if it was US politics? A large chunk of HN users are from the US. And as you have given me your political opinion about transphobia being "US specific", so does the author of the article claim "This thing happened. That's bad."
I do not believe your statement is correct.
Literally the first search I did was "police Poland" in a DDG news search on DDG and the third link was to earlier this month https://www.out.com/news/2020/8/10/polands-stonewall-police-... titled "Poland's Stonewall: Police Attack and Arrest Queer Protestors" :
> Nearly 50 people were arrested following the arrest of trans activist Malgorzata Szutowicz, better known as Margot, on Friday. The protests come amidst a rise in homophobic hate and rhetoric, and the recent re-election of President Duda who called LGBTQ+ rights a foreign ideology that seeks to destroy basic Polish values.
Or from https://euobserver.com/justice/149112 :
> Police were also investigating a separate case, in which a man on a balcony, next to a rainbow flag, grabbed his crotch during a World War II memorial march last weekend, Marczak said earlier. ...
> "No democratic country should allow the kind of incidents we saw, in which police enters people's private homes," [Rafał Trzaskowski] added, referring to police efforts to stop the balcony protester last weekend.
A DDG news search for "racism in Bulgaria" (literally my second search) includes this summary at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-50060759 about repeated racism by Bulgian football fans. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/20/bulgaria-sofia... points out "While racist abuse of players inside stadiums attracts attention outside Bulgaria, within the country it is the Roma who are the principal targets of thugs in black and men in suits."
A DDG news seach for "black lives matter Croatia" finds https://balkaninsight.com/2020/06/10/balkan-protesters-show-... where we read "Activists in Zagreb, Belgrade, Podgorica, Warsaw and Sofia rallied to show solidarity but also to point out the problem of racism and police violence in their own countries. ... Dozens of people took part in a protest march in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica on Monday evening. “There is no doubt that racists are also hiding among all our local Balkan fascists.“"
You find some articles via google search about things like "black lives matter" in Croatia and claim it is relevant there somehow. There was a BLM protest in Lithuania too (where I am from). There were maybe 10 black people in that protest. Half of them when interviewed said they were traveling through different countries (Estonia, Lithuania, Poland) to create and initiate those protest. Then if you look at the people who attended - mostly teenagers. When asked why they are attending this protest they came up with "to show solidarity for US". Which is to say - they are being fed US politics over the internet and found an opportunity to join an event here.
So that's how I see it. These US political things leak to other countries. Through media, through twitter and instagram, and now even through HN.
Is Malgorzata Szutowicz an Eastern European who thinks about "sex" and "gender" as different concepts?
I quoted a BLM protesters as saying they were there "to show solidarity but also to point out the problem of racism and police violence in their own countries", which includes racism against the Roma people.
People in other countries is worried because every time a problem is framed under anglo-narrative constraints it becomes distorted, unnecessarily confrontational, and it distracts media from talking about the real problems people care about.
BLM protests in particular were weird in many places. In my city there was a bunch of people (mostly whites) and it wasn't very well received, because there were other very pressing issues (like people dying by the thousands by a virus).
In those countries there are more important issues to protest about, like what is happening in Belarus, and unfortunately is something that doesn't have the same news impact as the BLM protests.
Another way of saying this is that Lithuania is currently either culturally or politically suppressing trans people, whether inherently or knowingly - I promise you trans people and their alternative identification exist there, too. You just dont see it and/or they are afraid to say so.
Also, I would really like to kmow where slavic you are that there ia no sexism against women in tech or girls.
Amd i dont know slavic programmer ashamed of that, the job is pretty well paid.
When there's such drama, participants even use english words to describe this phenomena. It's a clear anglo cultural artifact that spilled over due to US cultural hegemony.
I find it weird to see this when I rarely see comments so strongly arguing that a subject is too US-centric for HN in threads about stuff like the San Francisco housing market, American workplaces, or other aspects of online sites.
But then again, I didn't really put much stock in vague generalizations like this, or yours.
Regardless, point taken, it's not a US-centric problem.
1. Argentina has one of the highest femicide rates in the world. 2. Brazil elected Bolsonaro, who spends a lot of time spouting homophobic / misogynistic things. 3. France nearly elected Marine LePen last time around.
I'm not sure how one can pretend that only Anglophone countries have issues with misogyny, homophobia, and racism.
The same way that people in Anglophone countries pretend that they don't have issues with misogyny, homophobia, and racism: by being on the safe side of those issues! Straight men in the ethnic majority are very easily, even naturally, unaware of any tension or issues, and find it easy to dismiss people highlighting the experiences of others as "activism."
Argentina has a lot of issues, and women getting murdered is not of particular relevance among the high level of crime, the high level of corruption and the extremely difficult financial situation of argentinians, who can't even save money reasonably in their local currency, which may be a given for US, but it's a living hell for them. In facto, inflation is consistently the first problem for most argentinians in most polls.
Argentinians don't need to talk about BLM, because it's not relevant to them. Women in tech is probably one of the least problems for them. Energy and time are precious resources, and they need to be focused on important issues.
I think some of you guys just haven't got the empathy to imagine a different setting than your current one. Just being able to put money in a bank and forgetting about it is a luxury some people can't afford.