Wait, what?
I have never heard of Men's Rights Activism - and suddenly HN is a active example of such misanthropy?
Is this a different HN to this one? Or am I missing something?
I have never heard of Men's Rights Activism - and suddenly HN is a active example of such misanthropy?
Is this a different HN to this one? Or am I missing something?
The last one before that got flagged off the front page after one commenter declared that he was flagging it because programs that help women are sexist (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5353136). The story was highly upvoted, but it only takes a handful of flags to relegate a story to oblivion. Pg commented that it was an abuse of flagging, and it was restored, but pg usually doesn't show up, and most of these stories get buried, even when they're upvoted.
This story is a perfect example. With "19 points, 3 hours ago", it is ranked 151, right next two stories with "3 points, 14 hours ago".
I have been very surprised at the discrepancy between the level of dialogue.
When the discussion on HN is around almost anything, I find myself often learning, and surrounded by comments that are smarter, and more informed than any I would find in the real world.
When it comes to gender issues though, I think we as a community in general tend to be pretty behind.
I truly love HN. More than any other place on the interweb, this one has impacted my life in very real ways. I do however, cringe when the topic veers towards sexism. I think we can do better.
I haven't been. Without doubt there are some brilliant minds on HN, but even this populace is not immune from "believing first, proving second". The group writ large tends to fall into that trap on different topics than most people, but it falls eventually. Not just regarding sexism in tech either; there are others.
Well, we see a very different subset of comments, apparently.
Look at the top comments in this very thread, for example...
Yes, every message put on every blog was done by a full time developer working in our industry and not by thousands of children and teenagers and adults who have nothing to do with us but joined the bandwagon as it rolled along.
But hey, all nerdy men are all the same, right?
Try this one on; "Feminism Hates Technology".
Sounds dumb, doesn't it? Because it's not a useful rhetorical approach to having a constructive debate - which, I am guessing by the hue of your comment, we would both strongly agree needs to happen. We need feminism in tech, for a lot of reasons - but not this "sensationalism at the cost of progress" flavor of it.
In any case, the sentiment in the article resonates with me, because it matches my anecdotal experience outside of online communities. I haven't seen the converse in the feminist community, but that's also anecdotal.
We post awesome women engineers and developers for people to follow and be aware of. Let the rest of the internet wallow in its poisonous vat of sensationalist vitriol. Here, in our little corner of the internet, we will move the chain forward a few inches by enumerating incredible women in tech, the rest of the web be damned. Maybe no one will see it or care. But maybe - just maybe, some young lady will stumble across it and think "Hey, that could be me, too." and in that small chance will our entire effort henceforth be vindicated.
Allow me to begin: (others feel free to contribute as well).
Rebecca Murphey ( @rmurphey / http://rmurphey.com/ ) : I owe her so much for writing her infamous Jquery/Javascript training guide. She is certainly one of the most pivotal figures in the Javascript renaissance. Her writing hits the sweet-spot of technical depth and approchability. I firmly believe that she is the kind of innovator that whatever she is doing now, the rest of us will be doing in 5 yrs.
If you don't know who this is, you are already being left behind in the new landscape of physical computing. Easily one of the top 5 most infulential people in the "New Hardware" movement.
The hacker's hacker. Major thought leader in modern electronics/hardware hacking.
There are certainly strange expectations that guys have to deal with. The problem here is that they aren't challenging the norms because they're too "pussy" or "gay" and as far as I've seen, the MRAs are too wrapped up in their warm cloak of machismo and self-defeating. There are crazy women, as there are crazy men.
Systemically, guys are holding themselves back, and the way established law and custom are has more to do with irresponsible and/or overbearing guys in power in the past than it does some sort of gynocracy.
The (valid part of the) men's right movement is mostly concerned with men who:
* have been raped or faced domestic abuse, but are met with ridicule when filing charges
* have lost custody of their children to unstable / irresponsible mothers
I fully agree that women's rights is several orders of magnitude more important / severe, but that doesn't make these men's plight inconsequential either. This is not an either-or situation.
What is a problem though, and what was raised in the article, is the large mass of mysoginists that are essentially hiding behind that same men's right banner.
My experience has been that the Men's Rights Movement's good parts are often what is basically non-radical feminist activism repackaged, and its bad parts are reprehensible. (Note: radical feminism is things like the SCUM manifesto; most feminism isn't particularly radical)
The article does make the important point that there aren't a lot of places for (straight) men to discuss cultural ideas of masculinity and its possible ill effects. (In my experience, gay men often have a better understanding of male dynamics than straight men, and there's more of a cultural discourse about masculinity in some parts of gay culture.)
As far as your last comment is concerned; my support for women's rights comes out of having been gay and now being somewhere on the bi/genderqueer continuum so I can definitely relate to that.
If you're interested, this speech by Gary Carter captures it more beautifully than I've ever been able to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=P...
And attacking women for both of these is folly. That's why MRAs are not taken seriously, because they misdirect their (legitimate in the aformentioned context) concerns.