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Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

This is always where geeks run off the rails in discussions like this. We want to come up with rules for things: either this statement is "sexist" or it is not, and here is the objective reason for that decision.

But it misses the point. Context matters. In a utopian environment where women felt equally respected, sure, a sideways/slightly-inappropriate comment would be fine. In some workplaces today that might even be true. But it's not the norm, and in the real world people feel disrespected by this kind of treatment. Not everyone (but some, sure, as I'm sure someone will point out needlessly) likes the fact that their perfectly "normal" clothing choice can make them "attractive" in one context but the butt of a joke in another. Men, on the whole, don't deal with that.

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The rule is: some girls like it, some girls don't. You have to know what they will like before you open your mouth.

Oh bullshit. If I'm hanging out with my boss at a barbegue and does something stupid and I say "you're such a dumbass", it's a fun jab. If my boss says incorrect or misinformed in front of customers, and I say the exact same thing, in the exact same tones with the exact same stupid grin, it could be a lost sale, and a reprimand. Context does matter, and it's not some whimsical flight of fancy by fickle and capricious women.

My rule is Simple, Girls or Boys. Black or white, no matter what race, religion, ethnicity or even personal preferences people have.

Deal with them professionally. Judge them with only on performance, nothing else.

"girls"?! Do you know many female children that wear low cut tops?

Or do you mean adult women?

Via google: Girl:

A young or relatively young woman

A young woman of a specified kind or having a specified job - a career girl

Women who mix socially or belong to a particular group, team, or profession - I look forward to having lunch with the girls

Perhaps this is a language issue, but it's just as common for me to call my male friends 'boys' as my female friends 'girls', even though all are adults. Not sure what the issue here is.

There can be a lot of hang overs in languages that aim to demean and diminish people. Calling a black man "boy", or a woman "girl" is a way to belittle them.

"Boy" vs "Girl" is an interesting one. It's not uncommon, as you pointed out, to call adult women "girl". However you rarely in the straight male world do people refer to adult men as "boy". However in the gay male world, sometimes "boy" is used (e.g. this collection of gay short films 'Boys on Film': http://www.amazon.co.uk/Boys-Film-Hard-Love-DVD/dp/B001L5JMQ... ). This shows that "boy" (and hence "girl") is a slightly sexualised way to talk about someone. Should you be using sexualised terms in a professional environment? No, so say "women".

(BTW: Just because your google search found some results that back up what you say, but might be a bit misogynistic doesn't mean google is right. "Jew Watch" still shows up above the fold if I search for "Jew", but it would be wrong of me to excuse anti-Semitism based on that reasoning)

For men: I'm hanging with the "guys" or "bros." For women: I'm hanging with the "girls." (you can't say "ladies" in this context, you can't use "sisters," you could use "gals" but it would sound like you were from Texas).

If you're calling any female co-workers "girls" in conversations at or about the workplace, you're doing it wrong.

There is a long history of society downplaying women's contributions in the workforce by using cutesy terms like "girls", and some of the definitions you've cited here reflect that. But just because a term like "career girl" was once in wide use doesn't mean that it's still appropriate today. (Or for that matter that it ever was: can you imagine anyone ever having used the term "career boy"?) Much like the ridiculous term "co-ed" for "woman who we decided to allow into college", its time has thankfully come and gone.

I guess the words I use are closer to guys/gals then boys/girls then, except that it's used commonly the language (as opposed to gal in english, which is fairly rare - at least from my experience).

The rule is: don't assert your situational power. A woman alone or outnumbered among men is going to feel pressured. Comments you make won't be well received even if she is worried enough by the pressure to smile and hide her discomfort. She'll just curse your name to her friends after work.

Contrast: if you're the only man in a room of women, and the boss is a woman, would you dare speak up with your "nice dress" type comment? That's what it feels like to be on the downside of a power gap.

Yeah, why not? In a room full of men, the comment would be made to the other men, but for the benefit of that woman. It would be flippant and funny. In a room full of women, the comment would be more personal, and I would have to keep the tone extremely light because the more serious I am, the more vulnerable I am.

Seriously? You're saying that standing alone in a room full of women of uniformly equal or higher social standing (suggestion: if you have kids, take a day off and bring them to any local parent/child activity -- it's likely to be 100% mothers) you'd feel comfortable blurting out "You're wearing a low cut dress! I know where I'm sitting!".

Please (please!) try this. And bring a camera. I suspect you'll be very surprised at the results.

Of course I've done it. I was at an all-mothers event mostly by accident. She glared at me and kind of laughed. My mother gave me a dirty look lol. Pretty much expected. Did you expect something bad to happen? Maybe it would be different if she were single and available?

So I guess the lesson is that because sp332 feels no shame in deeply embarrassing situations that no one else would. Yikes. I'd be bright red and backing slowly toward the door if that came out of my mouth. You, sir, are weird.

Well I felt pretty bad about it at the time, and left the room after a minute. But later she told me (when I asked her about it) that it wasn't a big deal and I shouldn't have taken it so hard. My mom doesn't remember the incident but she tells me that no one would have cared much.

OK, but that's a really telling detail: she was gracious about it, because she could be (she was in a position of social power), and because you were visibly embarrassed. In the anecdote above, the guy wasn't apparently embarrassed, and Katie didn't have the social power to tell him "it's OK" even if he was (and why should she have to, if she was the one who was embarassed?).

See the point? These are critical details, and they change the moral calculus. You can't wave away an incident like this just because you can imagine something similar which wasn't a problem.

Like I said way up-thread: someone (you) is going to point out that not all women would react like Katie did. So what? Context matters!

I totally agree with you. I think JulianMorrison missed that point. Being on the "downside of a power gap" doesn't always mean that speaking up will have bad consequences. It's up to the person who has power. The men in the original scenario need to explicitly give the woman room to speak up if she's feeling uncomfortable.

Missing the point still. Everything done by the person on the downside of a power gap is done in the context of the predicted consequences for doing otherwise. This is a sexist society, full of such concepts as "humourless ice bitch". Actually showing a discomfort which is felt inside might be dangerous. A room entirely full of women is enough to counterbalance this and allow communal frowns to speak loudly. Merely "explicitly giv[ing] the woman room to speak up" is liable to get a response that means "don't hate me" more than it means "here is what I honestly feel". Power has to work harder to blunt its bad effects than just saying "so please ignore the power gap".

Believe it or not, I would dare speak up, even to my boss, if I thought she would appreciate the comment.

We want to come up with rules for things: either this statement is "sexist" or it is not, and here is the objective reason for that decision.

Um, yes - geeks want objective rules which allow us to figure out that an activity is either legitimate or not. This principle is called the "rule of law".

Are you advocating that we should abandon the rule of law in cases of sexism?

Laws are the bare minimum set of rules for your moral behaviour - the stuff that's so bad we have to punish you if you do it. If you can't do better than the bare minimum, then you're doing very poorly at morality.

Not all good behaviour can be written down as clear-cut rules. I sure wish you could, but you can't. It's a bit like the story of what happens if you try to measure programmer productivity: whatever measurement you use (eg. lines of code), someone will find a way to game the system. Yet people can still be "obviously" more productive even if we don't have a numerical way to prove it.

What apenwarr said. Also the "rule of law" is nowhere near as objective in the geek sense as you seem to think. It's filled with concepts like "the reasonable person" and "mens rea" which are heavily contextual and subjective.

Attempting to find nature's law governing complex social interactions sounds like a fool's errand.

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