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Comment by SwellJoe | Hacker News Reader

He shouldn't talk about his own experience? Why not? Why is it in poor taste to talk about a difficulty he went through?

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When you put it that way, I have no issue agreeing wholeheartedly. He’s making an example of incel culture as it appears to him to apply to software culture. After I describe it that way, I think he didn’t have to stoke the religious right in doing so. Something that hadn’t occurred to me until your reply (thank you) was that he might not be aware he’s doing that, and that is where I may be wrong in assessing the “taste” of the messaging. But I will be firm in my initial reason to post: knowingly aggravating each other is a problem in this country. We need compassion and mutual respect. Cooling the temperature of discourse will require a surplus in patience. Maybe even faith. (I am not religious, this is not a dog-whistle.)

I was so pre-occupied with someone being offended by what he was saying that I didn't see the clear positive angles you're showing. I appreciate that.

I honestly don’t get what you’re saying. From my limited experience Mr. Kelley often adopts a confrontational stance, sometimes to the point of appearing antagonistic, but I listened past the intro and did not interpret what he said as “religion bad” or even “conservatism bad”.

It’s one thing to purposefully provoke people, and it’s another to tiptoe around any personal expression or hot-button issue for fear of offending someone, and that is not limited to one end of the political spectrum. I have been on all sides of this; I was raised by a computer scientist (used to speaking freely/veracity being valued) and a doctor (used to self-censorship/not offending being valued), and have worked in academia, industry, and now medicine, and have experienced conservative as well as liberal approaches to both promulgation and suppression of free expression.

I feel like a lot of folks have bought into the Christian nationalist position that they are always under attack. Someone saying, "I had a hard time in a conservative Christian upbringing and I had to do some work to find a way to be happy and successful at the things I wanted" is, in no way, an attack on anyone or anyone's beliefs, and to frame it as such kinda just shows how wildly successful that particular propaganda tactic has been.

A few extremists are constantly rattling on about the "War on Christmas", the "War on Christians", etc. Meanwhile, Christians hold literally every lever of power in the US, and saying you're not a Christian in public is disqualifying from most public office in the US; not by law, but de facto, based on the prejudices against other religions and the non-religious. If someone raised in a conservative Christian household saying, "that was hard", is "aggravating" to anyone, then I would say the aggravated party is 100% the one in the wrong. I'm not going to pretend along with Christian nationalists that they need protection from any speech that isn't praising their beliefs and actions.

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