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Comment by marcellus23 | Hacker News Reader

> Semi-recently I had an (maybe my first?) experience where I wasn't the favored party in a situation

You're mid-30s and you might have just experienced your first thing like that? Man or woman, that's hard to believe. And more importantly, I'm not sure your experience can be generalized to all men.

As someone who has experienced situations like that frequently, and knows other men who have, it's a bit frustrating to see the implication that we all feel like "we're perfect for this" or "we're made for this" all the time.

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Yours is an argument of kind in reply to an argument of degree.

The degree is irrelevant. I don't doubt that men have privilege — but the "but women have it worse!" comment often shows up on articles like these, and since it's just whataboutism, it feels like it's suggesting that we shouldn't care about these issues.

Shouldn't we care about how society is treating people, no matter who they are, instead of getting into a pissing contest about who society is _really_ screwing over the most?

Not to mention, frankly, it's ridiculous to imply that a 35-year old male software engineer's experience is at all representative of that of the average male (who is far, far worse off).

> Shouldn't we care about how society is treating people, no matter who they are, instead of getting into a pissing contest about who society is _really_ screwing over the most?

This is a great point that often gets overlooked in discussions around gender, race, sexuality, class, or any other issue surrounding equality. I think people often hone in on the latter and it becomes counter-productive to fixing these issues. Thanks for bringing it up.

> but the "but women have it worse!"

You're jumping to a bit of a conclusion here. Most people seem to be reading this comment as re recognition that this particular guy is privileged compared to most people, not a blanket argument that women have it worse. Consider why you reacted so defensively to such an anodyne self-reflection.

He's not jumping to a conclusion, and I would suggest you add to the arguments instead of patronizing.

He absolutely is, "but women have it worse", is not implied anywhere in the comment at the start of this thread. It's a claim GP invented. See how a fairly similar argument can be raised respectfully and without defensiveness in the sibling thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30278864.

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