Hacker News Reader

Comment by statskier | Hacker News Reader

It’s funny to me that the honest intent of my comment was merely “that’s neat, it would be cool to expand it to other members of the community” and people go straight to discrimination & indignation. Is it so hard to just express that it’d be cool to take a neat thing and expand it?

View on HN

Seriously, I think the subtext is that people in the West equate Japanese = sexist (and therefore are an inferior people) and that the choice of focusing on ojisans, is a sexist decision made to degrade women.

When in reality it probably is just a light-hearted decision since old men are goofy, a lot of visible local businesses in rural Japan tend to be run by men, and the concept provoked a laugh.

I'd say the core reason is more that the person who started it was very much likely to be male and had a few existing connections to the group of men featured on the cards.

We should strive for equality where possible but to hold individuals account to it is tougher; we should enforce in our interactions/beliefs, that's personal responsibility.

But in play or for hobbies it's harder - the group of friends I play games with is all male for example (all gay, actually). But does that mean that I need to "diversity hire" a woman for the group? We'd have no problem with that at all, if a female friend asked to join when hearing about it we'd be all for it. But it's not like we're going to go out of our way to ensure that we have at least 1 woman in our play group. If that makes sense.

The article says it was made by a woman. Regardless I don’t agree we need to hold these people accountable for not making female cards, it’s their prerogative to do what they think makes sense or is appealing to them, and choosing ojisans as a theme makes sense if you have experience with Japanese culture because of the vibe associated with it. Not everything needs to be a gender equality culture battle, and I’m pretty confident nobody is feeling disenfranchised because they chose that theme.

>We should strive for equality where possible but to hold individuals account to it is tougher; we should enforce in our interactions/beliefs, that's personal responsibility.

To be clear, you think someone should be held accountable for not including women in this trend? What might that look like? Are we talking about new laws? Changing the values of society somehow so people will independently ostracize? Or just some more coordinated activist effort? What?

>But does that mean that I need to "diversity hire" a woman for the group? We'd have no problem with that at all, if a female friend asked to join when hearing about it we'd be all for it. But it's not like we're going to go out of our way to ensure that we have at least 1 woman in our play group.

Why not ask a woman to join on the basis of wanting to diversify? That seems entirely consistent with your stated values.

Lmao what are you on about

Japanese culture has quite a lot of sexism but so do many "western" countries some are better in some ways some are worse in some ways. And divide between "the West" and Japan isn't so huge Japan is fairly westernized in many ways. It's a rich liberal democracy with a lot of similarities to other rich liberal democracies we may label western.

> A lot of visible local businesses in rural Japan tend to be run by men

And you don't think that has anything to do with sexism in society?

You could say the same about people going straight to claims of sexism for a perfectly innocent story.

>Is it so hard to just express that it’d be cool to take a neat thing and expand it?

If people feel the need to do such a thing, they will do it without being asked.

Furthermore, the commentor is implying its sexist which totally seems unfair.

If you're referring to me, I don't think the mere observation that it would be fun to expand this to include women is me implying sexism. That honestly was not my intent, which I specifically was addressing in my follow up comment about how sad it is how quickly the responses devolved into sexism arguments.

So there is no problem with excluding women from these trading cards? Just that the entirely optional alternative to include them would be fun?

I would agree with that. Same as it would be fun to include younger people or non-Japanese people. Or dogs. Although it seems pretty random to just include everything that isnt currently the subject of these cards.

I'm not really following what your point is. The context in this case is pretty clearly geared towards connecting people across age generations. In that context, I merely observed that doing that for women would also be interesting. I don't see why you're branching off into random stuff like dogs.

I am equally interested in whether other non-Japanese cultures could do this too, although I suppose its popularity might not generalize across cultures. I don't know. Be interesting to try though, right?

Or is merely suggesting that deserving of some sort of criticism? The whole thing just made me think "why not share a neat thing with other groups". Dunno why that's such a big deal.

How is including dogs random? Its fun. You said you wanted to see women included because it would be fun.

> The context in this case is pretty clearly geared towards connecting people across age generations.

Well no. Its clearly connecting older Japanse men with kids. Which is why your comment about including women isnt non-sensical.

You said you wanted to include women because it would be fun and said your original comment shouldnt be interpreted to imply sexism. That avoids actually saying its not sexist so I could use some clarification now that it seems like its not just all about whats fun.

Do you think there is an element of sexism in excluding women on the trading cards?

No, I do not.

If anyone makes a similar comment in the reverse situation they’re dogpiled with “bUt WhAt AbOuT tHe MeNz?” comments.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com