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Comment by yelsgib | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, wouldn't it be great if everyone was just totally psychologically normal? I bet everyone can just fix everything that's wrong with themselves. Everyone has a surplus of love in their life available to help them overcome their problems.

Men are not puppies, asshole.

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Most of the time, there are many shades of gray on an issue. To my mind, this is not one. At my employer, our (not small) engineering department is probably around 10% female. I'm trying to think of anyone in the engineering department that would be so catastrophically unaware as to think comments like that to a female co-worker would be even remotely acceptable. I literally-literally can't fathom it, and I can't even conceive of working with such a person.

You're right: men are not puppies. They're human beings who are capable of owning their actions and changing their behavior if it is unacceptable. I would also say that someone so fundamentally damaged as to be unable to restrain sexist or racist behaviors is not a valuable employee regardless of technical skill or contribution--but unable is not the same thing as unwilling, and I have a hunch that those who are actually "unable" are few.

So you're saying that anyone who makes misogynist remarks at work has some sort of "mental issue", and that because of this we should just let it slide, or at least be sympathetic?

Give me a fucking break.

Calling out negative behavior tends to be very effective.

If you want to treat the symptoms, then by all means villianize the perpetrators.

If however you are interested in treating the cause, then I suggest you listen to what yelsgib has to say.

No. I am not saying that.

I'm saying that in this particular case a lot of the "negative behavior" stems from extreme internal pressures.

It's not the author's job to serve as a target for those negative behaviors. The responsibility lies with those whose behavior is unacceptable to find a way to operate, for lack of a better phrase, within expected parameters.

And it isn't even difficult to do so, most of the time! Everyone has some personality traits they could stand to work on; those that don't will look for any excuse they can find to justify their continued poor behavior.

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