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Comment by DirtyCalvinist | Hacker News Reader

Interesting here is the automatic assumption that the company should agree with the criticism and apologize. Except for the gratuitous accusation of bad faith, the response is what one might expect from someone who did not agree with the offended's characterization of the situation.

Rather than explain exactly why the display was sexist, this is mostly a combination of condescending hectoring and whining. You have no right not to be offended. If you think that the display was sexist, it is incumbent on you to explain why and not act as though it is obvious to everyone under the sun.

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> If you think that the display was sexist, it is incumbent on you to explain why and not act as though it is obvious to everyone under the sun.

Uh, when someone does something wrong, its not up to the oppressed to explain everything. This is classic victim blaming mentality that seeks to take the blame off of the company putting out sexist messaging and advertising and to place it on women at large. People have a right to be upset at this company and if you feel that people don't you are implicitly endorsing sexism.

EDIT: If you are occupying the position of privilege, you have a duty to go read about why this is sexist and to listen to the perspectives of the people affected (in this case women). You can Google, so don't sit there and demand an explanation before you are satisfied.

One of the key facts I hear about privilidge over and over, is that it is so ingrained in those who benefit from it, that they don't even realize it. So how else are they supposed to understand if you don't explain it to them? Essentially your message then becomes "You're bad but I can't tell you why, you should just know" which just seems like you're wasting their time. If it's worth their time to care, it's worth your time to explain it.

The point is that it's not the _responsibility_ of the oppressed to educate their oppressors. Obviously, it can be useful, and education is a big part of it.

But it's perfectly legitimate to say "Listen, I cannot explain this to you, but understand that what you say hurt me, and if that matters to you, you should take the time to figure that out."

It's about the asymmetry: for the privileged, this is a situation, an unusual part of their day, something that needs to be dealt with. For those who aren't, it's an ingrained part of everyday life. Your entire life could be devoted to education and there still wouldn't be enough hours in the day.

It might not be the responsibility of the oppressed to educate their oppressors, but who else is going to do it?

I agree that the "booth babe" situation is sexist (and I also happen to think it's incredibly stupid - semi-naked women are not going to make me buy your product, and I'd feel insulted by any brand that used that as a marketing tactic). But we also live in a society and, as hackers, in a sub-culture where we generally prize reason and debate over emotion. When we're debating other topics here, this reason-over-emotion thing doesn't seem to be a problem.

If someone says "I want you to do, believe or refrain from doing or believing something, and I can't explain why" then we generally ignore it. In no other context would this be seen as a reasonable line of argument.

The thing is, I don't often see people saying "this makes me feel bad ergo it's a bad thing". Most feminists have well-worked-out arguments for their positions and it's not hard for any reasonable person to accept them. I've been persuaded of many feminist arguments and this has contributed to changing how I see the world. Sure, when we're talking about arguments on Twitter then there's not a lot of space to cite references or bring in supporting arguments, but to pretend that they don't exist or aren't necessary isn't helping.

tl;dr I think the hacker community prizes rationalism and if you want to persuade them of anything you should use rational and not emotional arguments. This may be annoying but demanding that the hacker community abandons rationalism isn't going to work.

> we also live in a society and, as hackers, in a sub-culture where we generally prize reason and debate over emotion.

This is an ideal, but it's not true at all. Look at all the 'dramas' posted all over HN, does that seem like reason to you, or emotion?

Hackers are people too, as much as they try to deny it.

> who else is going to do it?

Either them themselves, or someone else. I think maybe this comes from a slight misunderstanding of what the saying means. Let's say that Bob makes a joke about rape around Alice, a survivor. Alice says "yo, that is not cool, and you're making light of a trauma I experienced in the past." Bob says "Why?" Alice says, "I don't want to explain it to you, I'm really upset right now." The saying is trying to explain that it's not _Alice_'s responsibility to make Bob see exactly where he went wrong; he can either look at the numerous resources online to explain why, think about it and puzzle it out himself, or maybe, ask Eve or someone else about it. But forcing Alice to confront something in her moment of pain is just not right.

> I think the hacker community prizes rationalism and if you want to persuade them of anything you should use rational and not emotional arguments.

This is _exactly_ why there's so much sexism here. The rhetoric around this is extremely frustrating, especially with your charge of 'abandons rationalism.'

Do you want to be righteous or do you want to be persuasive?

If you want to be persuasive, you appeal to people's better nature. You don't tell them that their cherished ideals of rationalism and no-bullshit, all-about-the-code ethos are a crock of shit, you tell them that you believe in this too, and you want it to be this way for everyone. The people who are undermining this are the misogynist minority, who are putting their irrational hatred of women ahead of all other things. The reason we keep having to have this tedious discussion is because these people are consistently attacking and undermining our fellow female hackers, and it's about time we told them where to go with that kind of behaviour.

The problem is, you've become convinced that the community at large is full of sexism, when it really isn't. It's just that nobody has figured out how to talk about this in a way that makes sense, and unfortunately arguments like yours are counter-productive (which is why people are arguing with you, which has the depressing effect of making you think that the community must be full of sexism, and the cycle goes on).

If you are occupying the position of privilege, you have a duty to go read about why this is sexist

According to what? The Social Justice Handbook? king_jester please stop lecturing us on how to behave. You are not our proctor. You clearly subscribe to a post-structuralist/Marxist belief system and thankfully most of us do not. What you are doing is equivalent to a Evangelical Christian going into an Atheist discussion forum and telling them all they must consult the Bible to find out why they're behaving incorrectly.

> According to what? The Social Justice Handbook? king_jester please stop lecturing us on how to behave.

My response was specifically to someone who demanded proof from affected before they would believe anything that is being said. You are free to do what you want, but I of course will call out sexism. There are tons of resources going over the basics a simple Google search away, so there is no excuse for someone to come into this thread and brush off people who are rightly pointing out this marketing stunt as sexist.

> You are not our proctor.

True, but that doesn't mean I can't call sexism out when I see it.

> You clearly subscribe to a post-structuralist/Marxist belief system and thankfully most of us do not.

Actually, I don't. Calling sexism out doesn't make me post-structuralist or Marxist.

> What you are doing is equivalent to a Evangelical Christian going into an Atheist discussion forum and telling them all they must consult the Bible to find out why they're behaving incorrectly.

Except I'm not telling anyone to consult my preferred religious beliefs and implying that not obeying my religion is behaving incorrectly.

The fact of the matter is dismissing people's criticism and experiences is simply moving the goal posts. That commenter could have easily done the bare minimum of googling to learn more, but instead they went with a brush off. I do personally behave that treating people ethically is the duty of folks who could otherwise treat people poorly, but that's just polite behavior.

There are tons of resources going over the basics a simple Google search away Actually, I don't. Calling sexism out doesn't make me post-structuralist or Marxist.

From one of your other comments: Gender is a performance, not a thing. You act in alignment with what you portray to others as your gender.

Oh bullshit. People that think "Gender is a performance" and that there are "basics" that have to be learned have clearly been steeped in post-structuralist thought or perhaps maybe you should Google more about the origins of your beliefs. And you're not just "calling out" sexism you're clearly instructing people how to behave and think.

That commenter could have easily done the bare minimum of googling to learn more, but instead they went with a brush off.

See what I mean.

I do personally behave that treating people ethically is the duty of folks who could otherwise treat people poorly, but that's just polite behavior.

Right.

> People that think "Gender is a performance" and that there are "basics" that have to be learned have clearly been steeped in post-structuralist thought

As someone who knows a thing or two about post-structuralism, I also know many, many people who think "gender is a performance" and know absolutely nothing about it. Your assumption that everyone knows the entire intellectual history of the ideas they espouse is a bit wrong.

Furthermore, while it's true that Butler et. al are some of the more prominent proponents of 'gender is a performance', one could easily believe that gender is performative for a different reason. A implies B does not mean B implies A, and all that.

Eh, I would say everyone has the right to feel however they wish; be it happy, sad, angry, or even offended.

Now, you are not entitled to have other people care about your emotions, but that is rather a separate issue. If you feel they haven't adequately defended their reaction you are of course free to disagree, but your right to disagree should not be misconstrued as a lack of a right to be offended on their part.

> If you think that the display was sexist, it is incumbent on you to explain why

This is a genuinely odd sentiment. The message was written by someone who thinks it is obvious why painted naked booth babes are "mildly offensive," for people who think it is obvious why painted naked booth babes are mildly offensive. Prefacing her message with a treatise on feminist theory 101 (or something) would just add noise to the signal.

In other words, this isn't for you and you can move along. You don't want to experience all of her "hectoring and whining," right? That woman is hysterical!

I actually thought of this after writing the above. It struck me than KeenIO is probably the sort of community where this wouldn't need to be explained.

For better or worse, HN is.

Thank you! The first version of the post DID have the explanation. But it ended up being multiple paragraphs and distracting from the point. It is hard to explain without a lot of historical context. It may become a separate post, though I'm not sure how much appetite there is for that based on what happened here today.

> Rather than explain exactly why the display was sexist

It should be obvious. I'm not sure, but I think that pretending not to know why people could be offended by this display in this day and age is just willful ignorance. Note: I'm not claiming that everyone has to agree that the display is offensive, but you must at least know why some people think it is.

At any rate, it is not true that every article on gender politics should have to re-explain the basics to people who haven't been paying attention for the last few decades.

> You have no right not to be offended.

I think you mean, "You have no right to be offended," and you're wrong. Of course, it's awful hard to force people to stop offending you, but you absolutely have a right to be offended.

I mean you have no right to an offense-free existence. Otherwise, claiming offense amounts to a heckler's veto, and is chilling and oppressive. You can be offended, and proclaim your offense to your offender, but offense isn't enough to require a change of behavior without an ancillary moral imperative, such as "offending some women is wrong".

On further thought, this post was probably written for an particular community, of which I am not a part, and on whose internal discourse I cannot make demands.

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