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Comment by andrewcooke | Hacker News Reader

because discrimination is about power. if two groups have equal amounts of power it really doesn't matter that much (except for social courtesy sake) what they say about each other. discrimination is a problem when it's associated with inequality. it's a big deal when a majority bash a minority. the other way round, not so much. even less so when the criticism is internal to the majority.

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I think you are conflating these two statements (the apex fallacy):

1. Most of the those who have power are men.

2. Most of those who are men have power.

They are very different statements and one does not imply the other.

The average man has no more power than the average woman.

    > The average man has no more power than the average woman.

Can the average woman apply for any given technical position with an equal chance of being interviewed by a person of her gender? When the average woman's colleagues organise a social event outside of work, does she feel as powerful as the average man when she's the only female in a room full of inebriated men? When the average woman's colleague accidentally says something sexist and nobody else notices because she has no female colleagues, is she as powerful as the average man?

Can the average man expect to marry a woman with a higher educational attainment than him, who will bear more of the load of providing for the family so he can spend more time with the children? Does a man have an equal chance of getting a college degree (college enrollment and graduation now favors women by 60 to 40 percent)? When a man's wife beats him up and the police not only refuse to take him seriously, but arrest him instead (the primary aggressor doctrine) how does that make him more powerful than the average woman?

first, the apex fallacy is about, say, most ceos (most people at the top) being men - it's about assuming things given the extremes. but in the case of the tech industry, most programmers (most people at all levels) are male. we simply dominate - we are a clear majority. so it's not about bias from extremes. we dominate even in the middle.

second, arguments based on the apex fallacy assumes that power can be treated in some "average" way, so even if the top has power, if the bottom doesn't it somehow "averages out". and that's pretty clearly not a good model for how society works (which is why these kinds of arguments are popular only in fringe anti-feminist groups).

> but in the case of the tech industry, most programmers (most people at all levels) are male. we simply dominate - we are a clear majority. so it's not about bias from extremes. we dominate even in the middle.

I don't get how dominating the tech sector translates into a general dominance of the society, whereby a woman's sexist remark against a man can be thought less damaging than a man's sexist remark against a woman.

>which is why these kinds of arguments are popular only in fringe anti-feminist groups)

I think feminists have a long and proud tradition of employing the apex fallacy, whereby they argue that men have all the power worth talking about because of their representation at the top (CEOs, high government posts, ...) and ignore their over-representation at the bottom (prison, homeless, suicides (3x), high school and college drop outs, lower educational attainment (college enrollement and graduation is skewed 60/40 in favor of women now)).

Which anti-feminist apex fallacy arguments have you run into?

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