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Comment by Tichy | Hacker News Reader

To be honest I don't understand what this has to do with sexism. I would think this is actually a crime (stalking?) committed by some deranged individual, whose real motivations we don't know anything about. Even if they were "hatred of women" or whatever, I fail to see what the lesson to be learned from that should be? Is the implied assumption that the deed was encouraged by rampant sexism in the industry?

In the last story I read about stalking the stalkers were people who had personal relations to the victim. No idea if this is common for stalking (as for rape), but I wouldn't be surprised.

I don't mean it to defend anything (what?), just trying to understand the "xyz is sexism" mindset?

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Sexism definition: Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

This was clearly sexism since it was demeaning to the woman and her gender was used as a part of that (e.g. the fact that pictures of naked women were used in the attack).

If the same happened to a man, we would probably call it harassment, not sexism, since men at large are not discriminated against based on their gender. A female posting pictures of a man at the conference wouldn't be signaling that men don't belong in the group, since the group is dominated by men to begin with.

Either gender can be stalked, but there are FAR more female victims, a symptom of sexism at large in society. FAR more women are harassed as well. 1 in 5 college women are raped during their college years.

To take some of your words, the deed was encouraged by and reflective of rampant sexism in society at large.

I don't think I've done a good job explaining this, but hopefully provoked some thoughts on it at least.

"since men at large are not discriminated against based on their gender."

Uh, hello there - that's a huge assumption. I think they are discriminated against very much, but I guess no point to discuss on HN :-/ I'll only say that I don't enjoy having to spend time away from my kid.

"A female posting pictures of a man at the conference wouldn't be signaling that men don't belong in the group"

Very confusing? I thought the problem was that the pictures where fake nudes? In any case I think in general a swath of postings of somebodies picture would be disturbing. Also I don't understand "it's sexism because in the pictures she is a woman"?

"1 in 5 college women are raped during their college years."

This has been debunked, I only googled for that yesterday: http://www.responsibleopposing.com/comment/1in4.html (originally I had a better link but this was the next best I found yesterday - the stats actually seem to go back to some manipulated study in 1985). (Edit: this link from the article is probably the better debunking, but longer http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9502/sommers.html )

"the deed was encouraged by and reflective of rampant sexism in society at large."

They don't even know who did it, so how can they know what inspired it?

Yes, men are discriminated too. I'm sorry about your situation. I encourage you to write about your experience and we can talk about how to help you.

Your experience doesn't mean we shouldn't work together to support women who are being discriminated.

The survey questions used in the study certainly don't reflect what we normally think of as "rape". But even if the statistic were 1 in 10, it is still a huge problem faced by women, and it's indicative of a society that doesn't treat women very well.

I don't understand why the "inspiration" behind the harassment matters. It doesn't even matter if the perpetrator was male or female. A woman was demeaned in a sexual way in front of a mostly male audience of her peers. Does the person have to tweet "I hate women" in order for this to be considered sexist?

"Your experience doesn't mean we shouldn't work together to support women who are being discriminated."

I never said that I wouldn't. In fact I googled those links yesterday because I am interested in the subject and like to research how to help. Understanding what is really going on seems to be an important first step, and throwing false numbers around won't help with that in my opinion.

"I don't understand why the "inspiration" behind the harassment matters."

That was my original question: what does it matter if it was sexist or not? To classify it as "sexist" seems to be an extremely awkward way to describe a crime of harassment. Imagine somebody with a blue shirt was murdered, and the conclusion was "the murderer really didn't like blue".

I thought sexism was bias or discrimination against people based on their gender. How is posting fake nudes of somebody on the internet bias or discrimination? It's just harassment/stalking. Sure, make it a data point in how likely women are to be victim of such a thing. But I don't see the point of calling it sexist. I don't think anybody at that conference applauded those actions, for example - even if they were sexist (except for the perpetrator, if he was indeed among the audience). Because those actions were simply criminal harassment.

Was it really rooted in sexism? Or was it just a convenient way to attack? I'm not even sure it matters. It was definitely a cheap tasteless tactic to employ.

"since men at large are not discriminated against based on their gender"

Some examples at random: percentage of males in teaching professions, and/or daycare?

Breast cancer funding and research versus prostate cancer funding and research, despite the relative frequency of each? Hint - 1:6 men will get prostate cancer, 1:8 women will get breast cancer. But the National Cancer Institute allows for $1,318 worth of research into prostate cancer per new case, and $2,596 for breast cancer (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/cancer-funding-does...)

Just some thoughts...

That's totally a valid point. I wish more men would speak out against this and, honestly, that it is not used to diminish the equally valid point of sexism in technology.

But we have to understand that in those situations it is not oppression. And that is a key point. Men are not oppressed by society when they are discriminated, because by-and-large, men make more money, have more opportunity, stay within their industries longer, are (perhaps due to last point) promoted more often, tend to be selected with a gender bias to speak about their subjects. Women currently get more college degrees in general today, yet the gender pay gap remains. That's evidence of systemic oppression. That's why we can say men at large are not discriminated against.

Men die earlier.

Go volunteer at a homeless shelter - they must be sexist as they are full mostly of men.

Go to a morgue in a place of heavy industry - mostly men.

Go on a cargo ship, spending weeks at sea in less than comfortable conditions. Oil rig, mine, etc

>Women currently get more college degrees in general today, yet the gender pay gap remains. That's evidence of systemic oppression.

No, that's a correlation of two things.

And if a man's wife has the illegitimate child of another man, even while married to the first man, the first man is financially responsible for the child. Cuckolding blames the male victim.

"Women currently get more college degrees in general today, yet the gender pay gap remains. That's evidence of systemic oppression."

That's just bad maths, sorry. First you have to look at what subjects men and women chose and what average pay is for careers in those subjects. Some people graduate in computer science, other people graduate in "do you want fries with that" liberal arts or whatever.

"percentage of males in teaching professions, and/or daycare?" I agree it isn't fair. But this can be seen as misogyny/sexism backfiring against men. One main reason why men are discriminated against in these professions is that for a long time many societies have considered that women should only care for children and domestic work. These societies have adapted to that, elevating gender roles and hierarchies, and making it hard for people to escape their grip. And although this has mainly been to the disadvantage of women, many men have also suffered from being limited to male jobs/roles etc.

You did a good job of explaining this, and thank you for doing so.

I've read all your comments on the various threads and a central theme seems to be the following question: how does sexism fit into all of this, isn't this just harassment/stalking? It's a fair question. Recall that sexism is discrimination based on sex OR behavior that fosters stereotypical/hurtful attitudes and roles. The attacker did both here. He attempted to drown out the technical ability of the victim by, during her technical presentation, spamming pictures that quite literally turned her into an object. This is a manifestation of classic behavior where men value women for their appearance only and everything else is ignored. Had that attacker had his/her way, this would have been the reality; all the attention would have been on her appearance and no attention would have been paid towards her technical presentation. His/her goal could not be more clear. To tie the goal back to sexism: what the attacker wanted is both a distinguishing treatment based on her sex (the first definition) AND a behavior that encourages ignoring the technical ability of women in favor of focusing on their appearance (the second definition).

I hope this makes my use of the word sexism clear. I welcome further communication here in this thread or at my personal email, which can be found in my profile.

Sorry if I only reply now, I was traveling. Also, I can't think of a useful comment. I just see it very differently, and the reason I ask "why has it to be categorized as sexist" is that I worry about the implications. For example if it is assumed that it is demeaning for a nude picture of a woman to be posted, but not if it was a nude picture of a man, the implication seems to be women should somehow be ashamed of the way they look nude.

I probably can't describe it very well, but I sense lots of weird implications of calling it "sexist" which I think are not really what the people calling the sexism flag had in mind.

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