Comment by vacri | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vacri | Hacker News Reader

I always find it weird when people say "what women want". As a man, I find it easiest to illustrate the problem to other men by simply asking them to substitute 'man' for 'woman'.

Who can say "what men want". Sure, if you listen to comedians, all men want is sex sex sex and maybe some cars and sports.

But even before you look at what individuals are like, if you just look at male archetypes, there are clear and common contradictions. The 98-pound weakling versus the musclebound beach bum. The hot stuff young programmer and the technically clueless grayhair. The expensively dressed high finance wizard and the smelly protesting hippy. The sex-mad pickup artist and the asexual man who simply isn't interested. The sports-mad bloke who hates literature and the literature-mad bloke who hates sports. The deadbeat dad versus the father who lives solely for his children.

And these are just archetypes, not actual individuals. They all have different wants, needs, skills, and desires. How stupid it is to say "what men want", to lump half the race into one generalisation. If you're a man, you should feel viscerally just how bad this kind of generalisation is; why should women feel any different when the same is applied to them?

I find it easiest to illustrate the problem to other men by simply asking them to substitute 'man' for 'woman'.

There's a great Chrome extension 'Jailbreak the Patriarchy' that does that to web pages. http://www.daniellesucher.com/2011/11/jailbreak-the-patriarc...

It's a fascination brain hack to "see how the other half lives". If you're a programmer interested in this whole field of gender/sexism, it's very eye-opening tool to use.

I don't think the archetypes correspond to 'what people want'. The 98-pound weakling may be playing world of warcraft all day telling everyone he is a muscle bound beach head for example. People often want what they are not, "The grass is always greener".

There is an artificial idealization of a 'Man' and an idealization of a 'Woman' in almost all societies around the world. The closeness of the individual to the idealization doesn't always change their want for the idealization. This is how we get media that often portrays the 'ideals' in various forms. People live vicariously through that which they want to be but aren't willing to work to be.

This might be accurate with some people, but it can't be applied to everyone. I am working towards everything I want, and honestly I think the journey is much more desirable then the end result. A big part of Zen is killing your ego, and I think this is a very powerful mentality to have.

I certainly wasn't intending this post to apply to 'everyone', that is a silly claim to make. However generalizations about a group are often valuable. In the NH context there are articles about A:B testing a UI all the time which gives you generalization of your target users. Just like years of show testing has provided TV channels generalization of their audience. I probably read at least 3-5 'interesting statistics' posts a week on HN that are all about generalizing a group. Why? because this is in fact valuable information, especially for the target audience of HN. Understanding what a populous 'generally' wants and does is a huge first step to providing a solution to a problem.

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