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Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

> I am gay. Prove me wrong.

The weird thing about this is that you're relying on a clear sense of your own identity (that you are not gay, because if you were you wouldn't challenge someone to prove you wrong, you'd just say it) to deny the value of other people doing the same thing, but with a different answer.

To wit: you're yelling about your own sexuality in an argument about how we shouldn't have to hear about someone else's. You know how all those woke folk talk about "privilege"? That's what privilege is. Trans kids don't get to say stuff like that on the internet, only straight guys.

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I deny that it should matter for grants, hiring, and other career benefits.

But it does and while it does, I shall claim I am gay.

That's what you said the first time, and I get the irony. I'm just struck that you're taking such care in your phrasing to clarify to the folks here how you're not actually gay. That doesn't seem to you to cut against your point? You think your identity is important enough not to be ambiguous about it[1], but not important enough to maybe be worth checking to see if people are being fair about it? (Which at the end of the day is all this policy means.)

[1] I mean, why not just say "I'm gay, and I this helps me even though it shouldn't"? It's because you don't want people to think you're actually gay, right? I find that really interesting.

I don't think they care about what people think with regard to their sexuality on an anonymous website. The point is you can't hand check diversity when it applies to a matter of personal preference. That makes any forced diversity of that preference pointless.

Snide comment, painful to read. Why should he say something that’s not true just to make people think he’s gay? Your logic is flawed.

He literally suggested saying something not true to make people think he's gay. That's... literally the idea! Make the DOE think he's gay, so he gets the perceived benefits. If that was snide, it wasn't me being snide, it was the upthread commenter.

And that's exactly my point: you KNOW he's not gay (because of his careful phrasing), and you find it "snide" to suggest that anyone think he is, when he's not. You agree with him (and me!) that his identity is important and worth respecting. And... isn't that exactly what diversity policies are intended to encourage?

The psychological profiling you are attempting here is, in addition to being clunkily shoehorned into fitting the OP's wording, somewhat irritating because it's conceptually equivalent to the idea that homophobic people must be secretly gay, which is detrimental to LGBT people for all sorts of reasons.

For clarity: I don't think the upthread poster is gay. At all. He made it very clear he is not.

I'm drawing attention to that fact, and the fact that the other upthread commenter and you seem to be likening the possibility that someone might think he was[1] as some kind of insult. And that's exactly why identity matters, even among people who claim it doesn't. It matters to you that people not confuse someone for being gay.

And I'm hoping maybe you take that to heart and realize that other people think the same way about their own identities. This seemed like a learning opportunity to me.

[1] Which, again, was the whole idea! He was going to claim he was gay to the DOE!

You are assigning these ideas to people but that's not at all the takeaway I got from the conversation myself. I won't presume to speak for the other people involved but I'm not getting the vibe there either. I understand the draw of wanting to challenge social norms and make us think about identity and whatnot; it's something I encourage in other contexts and have done myself. The specific argument would in fact work in other contexts. But it does not fit the present situation and the condescension about 'learning opportunities' is not warranted.

You're still arguing against a point I said explicitly was not mine. I won't presume to speak for you or why you're "not getting the vibe", but I can say with authority that it is the wrong vibe and that you have misunderstood.

I understand the argument, I just disagree with the premise that the OP was specifically anxious about not being seen as gay (though maybe they are in other contexts, I don't know) or that in context being gay is presented as an insult. The premise is projection and/or mind reading in this particular case.

More generally, cynicism about diversity points doesn't automatically mean disagreeing with the validity of LGBT or non-LGBT identity, just the validity of the corporate approach to that identity.

And I think the fact that "prove me wrong" was included the first time, that Velc (making the same misinterpretation you did) thought it was "snide" to insinuate that the OP was gay, and that you jumped in to a thread seven comments down to tell me that you were "irritated" that I was calling the OP "homophobic" puts the lie to that.

No, all three of you are clearly bothered by the idea that someone would be incorrectly identified. Identity matters to all three of you. All I'm asking is that you recognize that it matters to other people too, like for example the DOE grant reviewers.

There’s no way your being sincere. Genuine question, are you being inflammatory online for attention?

At no point have any of us indicated that we care about misidentification. The original comment had to imply he was straight in order for his point to make sense. His point being anyone can lie about their identity for personal gain if that opportunity presents itself. That is the only point that was being made.

I can obviously only speak for myself, but identity doesn’t matter to me one bit. If I need to lie and say I’m gay on a form to achieve something I otherwise wouldn’t, I will do so. I also don’t care if that means people actually think I’m gay. They might be shocked when they see me with my wife though.

he has to make it clear he's not actually gay because that's core to his point, which is anybody can claim it. obviously irl he's not gonna fill out the diversity section with "i'm gay (not actually lmaoo)".

> Trans kids don't get to say stuff like that on the internet

Lol, trans kids get to say any ridiculous shit they want to. What internet are you on?

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