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Comment by sho_hn | Hacker News Reader

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I mean the reasoning is more something like: to become a member of the board at OpenAI you must be extra-ordinary at something. At first sight, the only candidates for this something are: "start-up founder" and "spouse of famous person". The famous spouse thing is so much more extra-ordinary than being a startup founder, that the first "explains away" the latter. Even when being related to an actor makes it more probable to be selected for such a job, there may be other hidden factors at play.

Don't take in that direction. In your opinion he may be making a baseless accusation, but just because that accusation is against a female doesn't make it sexist.

It's not because the accusation is against a female, it's because referring to someone solely as the spouse of someone else is a frequent tactic used to dismiss women.

That might not have been the intent, but when you accidentally use a dogwhistle, the dogs still perk up their ears.

It's common and acceptable to refer to a nobody who's not shown their claim to fame in terms of another famous, impactful person who happens to be their spouse, sibling, etc.

Except Tasha McCauley has far more claim to expertise in this space, however tenuous you may believe it to be, than her husband does. JGL is not relevant in the discussion, either. We're not talking about her in context of him. We are talking about her in context of her position.

If you don't understand how referring to someone solely based on their relationship with another person is denigrating, particularly when trying to highlight your perception of them being incompetent, I'm not sure what to say to you.

You sound like you want to have an argument about gender bias (esp. according to your other comment). I'm not interested in that. You're free to live in your own version of the world and assume that talking about someone by mentioning their spouse is "denigrating". Jesus.

I followed this comment trail hoping to find out more about Tasha McCauley before I google her, but you ended up doing exactly what you are bashing. Defining her in contrast to her husband's expertise on the topic.

After reading the thread, I am still unsure what makes her a proper candidate to the board seat, but I might know that's she has more claim than her husband to it.

There are lots of comments in these threads that go over her different qualifications and experiences.

I am in a discussion about referring to people as 'spouse of x'. They're not the same conversations and I am not sure why you would expect the contents to be the same.

This might just be the worst example of taking a metaphor too far

This is a good point. Saying something is sexist is what makes it so, plus why would it be sexist to dismiss her as just a wife in the same post that acknowledges that she runs a startup?

GP knows the headcount at her company so they probably know that it’s a robotics company, but it was simply of dire importance that we know that she is a wife.

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