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Comment by pm90 | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a failure of imagination. Or maybe an expectation of seriousness which can only be associated with certain kinds of people who dress and speak a certain way.

The reality is that anyone can be really smart and make “serious” contributions and they deserve to be taken seriously regardless of how they choose to dress or present themselves. We have chosen a certain definition of normality and we can choose to expand that to be more inclusive.

From what I’ve read about Naomi, she is interested in both the engineering and the social justice aspects of her work. She deserves to be taken seriously and not dismissed simply because of the way she looks.

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I think she is a smart woman and that she intentionally uses sex appeal. I actually don't condemn her for that, but to suggest the animosity exists "because of her looks" is dishonest. It is because she uses sex appeal for marketing herself. I am fine with that, but it is what it is. Some people have a problem with that and I doubt that will ever change and there are also good arguments that it is or should be irrelevant to the topic.

Some people do have a problem with that, and they are telling on themselves when YouTube demonetizes Wu but no one will ever touch Kyle Hill's videos in spite of the fact that he teaches science while looking like the love child of mid-90s Arnold Schwarzenegger and Madonna.

(... And nobody should, his videos are great. Seriously if you haven't seen his stuff go check it out. But there's an obvious double standard if he's in and Wu is out).

An alternate perspective is that she dresses how she wishes, and other people ascribe that sex appeal regardless. The most outrageously attired of a group of similarly skilled people is likely to draw the most fans and detractors, whether that was their intention or not.

I'm guessing it's a bit of both, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

I'm a white male, so it's relatively easy to convince people to take me seriously. That isn't a great situation, but noone expects me to downplay that to make things more fair.

She has a harder time being taken seriously (as evidenced by the MAKE story), but she's attractive which makes her videos more interesting. I don't think you can blame her for using advantages.

From what I've seen of her, she does seem to enjoy being dressed nicely, so I don't think she's only doing it to get views.

I tend to hold the opinion that a person who doesnt look like "they belong" is among the most likely to have actually earned the right to be there.

Of course appeal is subjective, but I believe she calls herself sexy cyborg. Denying intent is almost as offensive as a denial of existence I believe. Although there can be cases like that.

Because if there's anything to judge a person on the basis of, it's Reddit logins they chose when they were 20 and stuck with as they grew in popularity

I don’t know why Naomi’s comment is being downvoted. Another young (at that time) woman, Amanda Knox learned the hard way about being judged on the basis of her online account name: When the tabloid media learned that her Myspace nickname was “Foxy Knoxy”, they spun salacious stories, making her out to be some sort of “femme fatale” who would be capable of murdering her flat-mate, Meredith Kercher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Meredith_Kercher

At least you didn't use your old FoxyAndroid16@lycos.com address, you'd break the prude sensors.

/s for anyone wondering, I can only hope someone is still using some dumb Lycos e-mail today.

Quoting her: "I look the way I do for myself, and I don't object to any one else's polite enjoyment of that."

Considering something like body dysmorphia (as an example) might help give someone benefit of doubt. I'm not going to pretend to understand exactly why someone feels that way.

>Considering something like body dysmorphia (as an example) might help give someone benefit of doubt. I'm not going to pretend to understand exactly why someone feels that way.

Yes, it is something like that. But it's bullshit for me to dance around it and expect some sort of grace. I will say something.

I don't think you owe justifications for your body modifications or wardrobe to anybody: not to the police, not to the CPC, not to your parents, not to Google, and certainly not to random people on Twitter competing to see who can be the cruelest.

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