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Comment by moxiemk1 | Hacker News Reader

I really enjoyed this article. Harris O'Malley seems to actually see the real problem, and expresses it with a hell of a lot more nuance than most other treatments of the subject do.

>> And when you check back on Friday, I'll provide you with some concrete applications on how being cognizant of male privilege will improve your relations with women.

I'm excited about the possibilities of the "practical applications" - there is an awful lot of "identifying the problem" and "raising awareness" (as Helianthus refers to in another comment on this thread), however, not a lot of solutions. Obviously they're not simple, and they're not easy, and they're imperfect, but I'd like to see some other people's ideas about them.

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At first, I enjoyed the article.

However, I lost all respect for the author after reading some of his responses in the discussion thread.

One post of his in particular caught my eye :

"...And the first thing you did when confronted with this topic was to defend, counter, argue, and resist.

And by doing so, you immediately lost based on the rules set forth by the article..."

The notion that an argument cannot be refuted because of some preemptive ban on counter-arguments is, frankly, ludicrous to the point of being offensive.

This doesn't invalidate the contents of the article, but it effectively ends my interest in reading anything else by this author - including his follow up piece.

That is a fairly disappointing rebuttal by him. Hopefully we can simultaneously absorb the good of a nuanced discussion of the issue and condemn bad arguments about it by the same.

In what is a largely evidence based/logical culture, it's frustrating how both sides are often almost completely filled with illogical shouting. Hopefully HN can become a place with a lot more productive discussion about it than it previously has.

Probably the worst feature of modern feminism is the idea that any and all disagreement with modern feminism is sexism and thus deserves no consideration or response.

I wish authors of these sorts of pieces would focus more on the following two questions:

1. What do you want me to do?

2. What's in it for me?

Paint a picture of your ideal gender politics, and let me know why I'd like it better than the one we've got now. You might get further than you are just by attempting to convince me that people I like are "misogynists".

What do you want me to do?

"Feel bad about yourself" is usually my takeaway.

I used to think this and it's not true. The takeaway is to when you interact with people think about what your interaction is doing to the other person, on many levels.

Feeling bad is A) crappy and B) not productive.

Whatever you do when you read an article like this is you shouldn't feel bad about being male, and you shouldn't feel bad about the fact that you are a privileged class. You should recognize the ways that privilege can cause the people around you to be uncomfortable and then avoid doing those things. There isn't a list of actions you can take, other then treat everybody in a way that makes them feel welcome. Nobody wants to be leered at in a technical setting, nobody wants to be groped in a classroom (true story), and everybody wants to be treated like they are your peer.

In some ways the solution falls out of just knowing that it is a problem. If you think about it during your interactions with other people, then you can avoid the harmful things that could be said.

The reality of male privilege is that it's so pervasive in our community (in many communities) that even a little bit of acknowledgment that it might exist, and the males in that communities trying to lessen the harm that it creates can make a huge difference in making it less an issue.

I wonder how much of this acknowledgement can be done effectively as a group vs. as individuals. It seems like individuals can change their behavior very well this way, which eventually trickles to the community, but I've come to be a bit disheartened on the group side.

In a thread not long ago, I made a comment calling out an article (of an article about Steve Jobs, not gender) for expressing a (to me) particularly exasperating form of the "pedestal" side of female-discouragement. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3229502) If I recall correctly, the score of my comment fluctuated a bit before hitting 10, then going back down to 2. I didn't find any of the responses particularly thoughtful, but clearly it is a contentious issue.

A number of recent call-outs by women about conferences seem to indicate that accusations of sexism without 100% proof of sexist don't fly in our community, much as anything without 100% proof tends to fall flat. However, one of the most frustrating parts of sexism (and related problems) is that they are subtle and often subconscious. This discourages me.

I think community acknowledgment is basically useless honestly. I think it comes down to individuals needing to understand privilege and how it affects them and the groups they are a part of. Then the individual has to take it upon themselves to make a change that matter to the people around them, and the people they want to have around them.

If individuals don't take responsibility for their actions groups can never change.

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