Hacker News Reader

Comment by RyanZAG | Hacker News Reader

I have no idea why this has to be so gender specific. Every argument works equally well in terms of fathers as well, yet she doesn't even take that second to even consider the issue. She doesn't think to write about people, but only about women. You get the feeling that the author has spent so long thinking of women as 'us' and men as 'them' that she actually sees the two as two completely separate species.

Terribly sad, maybe the next generation of feminists will be able to break out of the box they've made for themselves, and devote themselves to more general philosophic introspection.

View on HN

> Terribly sad, maybe the next generation of feminists will be able to break out of the box they've made for themselves, and devote themselves to more general philosophic introspection.

And maybe the next generation of people who get riled up about Aaron Swartz and Weev will spend equal effort and bluster getting riled up aggressive prosecution of kids in the Bronx. And maybe the next generation of people who have online protests about SOPA and PIPA and CISPA will exert similar efforts opposing laws that make it easier for companies to pollute.

Or maybe people will continue to be people, and have issues near and dear to their heart that affect them and not feel like they have to fight for every perceived injustice out in the world.

okay, but if you campaign for the well being of women by appealing to notions of gender equality, you must ultimately equally believe in the well being of men.

whether you expend equal energy on both causes is up to you. it may say something about what you really believe though.

That doesn't make any sense. Are people who believe that gays can be equally good marriage partners and parents as straight people obliged to spend just as much energy on causes related to marriages among straight people? Does their focus on marriage issues for gay people mean that they somehow think that straight people aren't as suitable for marriage?

it makes a lot of sense, and i answered your question already,

> whether you expend equal energy on both causes is up to you.

It really doesn't, and this part is bullshit: "it may say something about what you really believe though."

If I'm a gay guy fighting for marriage equality, my lack of efforts to fight for marriage issues affecting straight people does not "say something about what [I] really believe" about whether gays and straights are equal.

It's an utterly bullshit argument. Women are pretty much the only group where people say "well if you believe men and women are equal, why don't you fight for mens' rights?" Nobody says that to gays fighting for marriage equality, or blacks fighting for racial equality. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say it harkens to sexist notions. Men are expected to watch out for #1, but women are expected to be motherly and crap and care about the welfare of everyone.

>Women are pretty much the only group where people say "well if you believe men and women are equal, why don't you fight for mens' rights?" Nobody says that to gays fighting for marriage equality, or blacks fighting for racial equality.

What? You get pretty much the same argument against affirmative action. "If you care about black children in poverty then what about white children in poverty" etc., and all the (in many cases quite sensible) arguments that aid should be based on need rather than race.

People might say "if you care about black children in poverty then what about white children in poverty" but people almost never say that to black people. It's always a statement of policy in general terms, not a targeted criticism to black proponents of a policy.

In other words, people might think that we as a society need to care about poor white kids as much as poor black kids, but nonetheless black people generally don't need to make excuses about caring more about black children than white children. Nobody accuses them of secretly thinking that blacks are better for doing so.

The difference is that men's issues and women's issues are really tightly intertwined. You cannot put pressure on men not to have work-life balance and not to be the one looking after the kids without also pushing women into becoming the main carer for them, and likewise you can't lift that load from women without some way for the men to pick up the slack.

Sadly, what generally happens is that once activists for women's rights have categorised something as a men's issue, they stop caring about it. So you get articles like this one which never question the underlying assumption that women are the ones that need to compromise their careers in order to raise a family, and that men have no interest in doing so. The article talks about women being locked out of positions of power because of this - if we could change things and make it just as normal for men to put their career goals aside to raise kids, that'd have huge implications, but that's a men's issue and hence ignored.

You didn't.

> whether you expend equal energy on both causes is up to you. it may say something about what you really believe though

The clear implication is that focusing on issues pertinent to group X (e.g. gay marriage, society's insane expectations of women), it means that you must care more about people in group X than people not in group X. Which makes no sense; if you have a buggy codebase, you focus on fixing the bugs, not dividing your time equally among all the mostly-already-functional bits.

>if you have a buggy codebase, you focus on fixing the bugs, not dividing your time equally among all the mostly-already-functional bits.

In this case that's the point -- work/life balance is not a problem for "women" but a problem for "humans" -- so why concentrate on solving it for women or framing it as a "women's issue" if the same analysis and solutions go for men too?

You missed the point and created a strawman to argue against. Gay marriage has no bearing on straight marriage so your analogy falls flat.

Men and Women (gay or straight is irrelevant) are inextricably linked as human beings that face the same problem of creating a future together that supports equality. To focus on one group ignores 50% of the solution.

> Men and Women (gay or straight is irrelevant) are inextricably linked as human beings that face the same problem of creating a future together that supports equality.

And gays and straights don't?

Please clarify what you are trying to say.

Exit claimed: "okay, but if you campaign for the well being of women by appealing to notions of gender equality, you must ultimately equally believe in the well being of men."

The fact that women fight for women's issues on the basis of gender equality is no different than the fact that gays fight for gay issues on the basis of equality w.r.t. sexual orientation. In neither case does the implication follow that just because people fight for their own group on the basis of equality with other groups that they should necessarily be concerned about the issues of concern to those other groups.

I believe strongly in environmental justice, and think poor people deserve a clean environmental equally with rich people. That doesn't mean I care or spend much time thinking about pollution in the Hamptons.

> The fact that women fight for women's issues on the basis of gender equality is no different than the fact that gays fight for gay issues on the basis of equality w.r.t. sexual orientation.

Yes, it is. Men and women are two halves of the whole that makes up Humans. And any progress in the area of equality among Humans must ultimately involve both.

Exit's argument was a continuation of the original argument posited by RyanZAG, for which he was down-voted in spite of a meaningful contribution to the conversation. Down-votes are for useless or off-topic replies, not for when you simply don't agree.

From RyanZAG's original comment: > I have no idea why this has to be so gender specific. Every argument works equally well in terms of fathers as well, yet she doesn't even take that second to even consider the issue. She doesn't think to write about people, but only about women.

Yes, exactly! I think the piece is excellent -- perhaps the best I've seen on the issue -- and my only criticism is that it doesn't speak at all to men, to whom essentially all of these insights apply. That said, men do seem to be much closer to have figured this out for ourselves: generationally, we seem to have (quietly) decided that we don't want to be like our absent fathers -- that we want to be home for dinner and available on weekends. Work is important, but family is essential.

Speaking personally (I am a VP of Engineering at a startup and a father of three), when I have needed to forgo a work commitment for a family one, I have enjoyed nothing but support from my CEO. He's a generation older than I am (his kids are young adults), and he is surprisingly blunt about wishing he had made different choices when they were younger. He knows that I work my tail off -- but he also knows the importance of making the right decisions at the right moment. So I can't help but thinking that the Sandberg-esque way of thinking strives for women to become like work-consumed men from a generation ago -- rather than modern, balanced parents as advocated by Walsh.

The Last Psychiatrist has an excellent article about why women are encouraged to become like "work-consumed men from a generation ago". You might find it interesting.

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/03/dont_hate_her_because...

Not the OP, but thanks for the link. As a guy I was a little bit saddened by the "choose a husband very carefully"-part, I see that the Last Psychiatrist addresses that in a very compelling way.

From that article:

My personal vote for Lean In valedictorian is the woman at the bottom left, I don't know her life or her medication history but she has the diagnostic sign of her cuff pulled up over her wrist in what I call "the borderline sleeve," that girl will have endlessly whipsawing emotions and a lot of enthusiastic ideas that will ultimately result in a something borrowed/something blue. Hope her future ex enjoys drama, he's in for seven years of it.

What? Awesome, the authoress is judging a person in a PR shot from a cut-off view of their arm from behind. OK, I am done reading these articles for today.

That article was extremely politically incorrect, often offensive, and deliberately abrasive.

And it also raised a lot of interesting and thought provoking ideas.

> You're going to try and counter that this is a staged publicity photo, but my rum makes me fearless against your rebuttals.

If only you had read one sentence further...

That was a truly great article, thank you.

> "generationally, [men] seem to have (quietly) decided that we don't want to be like our absent fathers -- that we want to be home for dinner and available on weekends."

Maybe we're not as physically absent, but I'm having a hard time seeing the younger generation of fathers as being any more present in a practical sense, given the "online and accessible" work-culture we've pioneered.

Whereas Boomer fathers sometimes worked nights and weekends, at least when they showed up for the big game, they were more-likely-than-not watching it. X-ers are barely watching even when we're recording it. And I think it's open question as to whether "sometimes dad has to go in to work" is necessarily worse than "whenever I'm with dad our time is likely to be interrupted by his having to deal with work".

Maybe by raising a generation of compulsive messengers this will just seem normal to them and not like a plague on family time. But for me? I don't see it as an improvement at all. It looks like a step backwards.

(And truly, not every X-er gave into this culture but -- generationally -- always-on is certainly the trend and looks to be the norm from where I'm sitting.)

I don't know, personally I think I would have benefitted from being able to see a father-figure-type-person doing their thing, even if that meant having to check his phone during the big game, etc. Hopefully a good parent would do so in a balanced way, and the kid would pick up good habits and expectations about what it really means to be a polite and functioning person of the time. IOW, my vote would be for my father (or any theoretical parent) to have been present and leading by example, even if part of that leading is about the necessary evil of being "online and accessible" all the time.

A "good" old-school parent would ideally have limited after-hours work as much as was reasonably possible and imparted solid lessons about meeting commitments without compromising family values as well. All of that sounds like a separate consideration.

The question at hand is more: assume X hours of 'overtime' work needs to be done: would we rather have that chunk be composed of unpredictable interruptions of unpredictable length through any and all 'family' time? Or gathered up into larger, fixed chunks of extra 'at work' time with advanced warning, discrete start/end times, etc?

This.

Your response reflects more on you than the author - you are a 20-something who has no experience at all with children/job pressures, and you probably believe in sexism as much as you believe in the tooth fairy.

It's not the same article to talk about this in a gender-specific way - men don't face the same type of conflicting pressure from society to raise children and be a career success. As a fairly recent dad, with a lot of fairly recent dad friends, it's way different for a man than a woman. Everyone just by default assumes the woman will hold the baby all the time, and they catch flak for using daycare, and a million other things you'll rarely experience as a dad. Dads get kudos for doing barely acceptable jobs with their kids and focusing on their career, while women get trashed for the same behavior.

There is this one fundamental physical thing that tends to make me think there is some natural logic to this order - that the woman has to be up at night breast-feeding, and so it's hard for the man to assume the default caretaker role without bottles and other nonsense. But this gets extended to all parts of a woman's life, and I think even today there is undue pressure on women to raise the children (and if you want to do some work, schedule it around your babies).

Would add to what you've written above that "house husbands" are not necessarily revered in a positive way by popular culture (like business titans, celebrities, athletes etc.) as important high achievers. Nor do women (anecdotally over many many years) seem to give high social standing to house husbands. I mean sometimes they talk a good game or use semi patronizing words. But in the back there is always an underlying "couldn't cut the mustard apparently" floating around. Women in general want men who can slay the dragon and bring home the meal and make a comfortable life (which of course varies greatly on the woman).

I would caution by the way anyone who is "young" who has a spouse, girlfriend etc. that tells them "money isn't important to me I want you to spend more time sharing responsibilities around the house and helping with the kids" to wait until later when you aren't living in the right school district or can't pay the bills whether all that means anything that is when idealism collides with economic reality.

>Would add to what you've written above that "house husbands" are not necessarily revered in a positive way by popular culture (like business titans, celebrities, athletes etc.) as important high achievers.

Would you say that "house wives" are? Plenty of popular culture now portrays the woman who stays home to raise her children as a traitor to her gender who should instead be serving as an example to young girls by climbing the corporate ladder and achieving income equality with her husband.

>Women in general want men who can slay the dragon and bring home the meal and make a comfortable life (which of course varies greatly on the woman).

I think it would be more accurate to say that women want both, and when that doesn't obtain and it comes down to a choice between "has a stable well-paying job" and "never has to stay late for work" the man standing on the unemployment line tends to lose. Which modern society has caused to be increasingly the case for women as well -- hence the increase in demand for daycare but not the increase in demand for homemakers of either gender.

"who should instead be serving as an example to young girls by climbing the corporate ladder"

Agree that seems to be the case.

"I think it would be more accurate to say that women want both"

Agree once again but I'll add this to that thought.

People (men are probably just as guilty) want to be able to combine the best qualities of many different people in one person to come up with the uber human. Using the example of women my ex wife comes to mind. She would take the best qualities of several different husbands of her friends and hold me to the standards of the combined person.

Because it's possible that the way our society behaves and judges success is modelled more after men's natural inclinations and needs than women's, and that the liberation of women was seen as women pursuing the same goals as men do, when perhaps it should have been women pursuing slightly different goals.

It's possible that feminism as a movement overshot, a mistake that's easy to forgive. Women needed to be made free, badly, and in that feminism drove incredibly important changes. However, many have come to believe that applying equal success standards for woman actually doesn't pay enough respect to women's distinct needs. It's possible that men and women, on average, just don't experience well being and meaningful lives from the exact same things.

In a way, the historical ideals of feminism may be another act of chauvinism - applying the standards of men to women (instead of say, applying the standards of women to men). Perhaps "real" feminism should acknowledge that men and women have distinct enough needs to not be judged according to the same standards of "success". Perhaps, it should be acknowledged that equality means equal rights, not equal needs or equal desirable outcomes.

I think you hit the nail on the head in the way our society behaves and judges success. Even for men, goals are different. My definition of success may not necessarily be the same as yours. Yet in society, in the media, a successful person is someone who has made it career-wise. If I started a small business and manage it well that I can support a family, should that not be considered success as well?

The same can be said about happiness. Everyone talks about how we need to save people in less developed nations and bring in new technology to do things the "better" way. I believe that developing nations have far greater things to teach us developed nations about what life and happiness is about.

(Edited to change "first-wave" to "second-wave.")

A quote springs to mind:

“Can’t you see this game is crooked?” Devol asked. “Sure I know it, George,” sighed Bill with resignation, “but it’s the only game in town.”

Prior to the rise of feminism, a male dominated workplace was arguably the only game in town.

From talking to my wife, the notion that you're obligated by feminism and by your sex/gender to pursue success seems distinctly second-wave feminism, whereas I suspect the likes of third-wave folks' opinions are a lot less uniform.

(As an aside, I find these differences kind of fascinating. Supposedly the word "ladies" carries different connotations depending on your generation; older generations are likely to see it as patronizing, whereas younger ones are likely to see it less negatively.)

Anyway, the bottom line is that as far as modern feminism is concerned, it's more important that you are empowered to choose whether you want to climb the ladder; be a stay-at-home parent; have a child without being married, etc. It's more about empowerment of choice, for women in particular but for individuals in general (e.g. more time at home for parents, better childcare options, and so on, would all improve quality of life for men and women).

That's exactly as it should be, but not everyone has jumped on that wagon yet. I've heard a "a woman mostly taking care of her kids at home could not be truly happy" sentiment expressed often enough.

This is true. There's a ton of debate about it in third-wave feminist circles from what I can tell.

There's a Catch-22 goes something like: as more women join the workplace, they act as role models and (for lack of a better term) envoys. If/when little girls see women doing things, it'll seem that much more realistic a choice.

But if feminism is about choice, doesn't that limit your choices by declaring that staying at home to raise kids is in somehow immoral or degrading?

It's also difficult because how do you distinguish your example woman, who made a choice, with a woman who did not have the choice, for (e.g.) socioeconomic reasons? How do you distinguish between someone who felt empowered to make a choice and someone who was socialized to accede to others' needs first?

In general I'd probably be skeptical of someone who said that raising children was more fulfilling than any other pursuit, but what's more important than that is that there should be a choice in the first place. Quite frequently there isn't.

"I have no idea why this has to be so gender specific."

Because it is a reaction to coverage and pressures on women to be overachievers for the sake of feminism and related causes. Other than that, no reason.

That's my take too. I don't think the author would say the same does not apply to men, but she is approaching the question in relation to feminism.

Exactly. There are a shocking number of comments making the same point as this comment. Seems like they had missed the context of the article and started pointing at the gender specificity of it... but why?

I don't believe I missed the context of the article - I believe I tried to address that exact issue. The article - and the whole context surrounding the article - are discussing the issues of 'getting ahead' and work-life balance in a way that is very specific to women. They're certainly free to do this, but I believe they consigning themselves to a type of echo-chamber and missing out on incredibly useful philosophy on the subject by trying to constrain it to only women.

When I say that the situation is sad I'm referring to the loss to everyone involved by not realizing that the issue of work-life balance is a truly global issue, and by boxing it in with specifics (such as women only, tech worker only, etc), the debate is far shallower and loses out on a lot of important history.

.. but why?

The reason is that there should be no 'gender specificity' at all in the article. Including it is a mistake and detracts from the very important message and makes it difficult for male experts in the field to enter the discussion as well. It's a loss for everyone involved.

I wouldn't decry the article addressing mostly women, because IMO, work life balance is more an issue for women esp those of us who harbor carrer related ambitions.

In spite of men treating women as equal and sharing responsibilities, in my experience, most of the time women carry the greater part of the daily load related to running a household and tending to children.

Women feel an unspoken pressure from society to have a clean beautiful well run house. Add to that the pressure to look good, be in a good shape and dress well.

They are bombarded with images of professional women in business attire and women in aprons cooking gourmet meals with children frolicking around. They are constantly struggling to be both these type of women.

On the other hand, society and media don't put out so many conflicting images of men. Men have been consistently expected to be bread winners, be successful in their professional life.

I am not saying, men don't understand that with a working wife, they have to lend a helping hand at home, but from what I have seen, women end up carrying most of the daily brunt and they feel like they must because of what they see on tv and thousands of years of history.

[EDIT: fixed typo]

In this regard, to make it less gender specific, we would have to assign the term 'second shift', which, although this term is historically used in regard to women, it can also be used for men that have to do the majority of child raising and housework in addition to working full time.

So, if anyone, a man or a woman, is doing the majority of the housework and child raising ('second shift'), this article speaks to them.

agreed

I think, though, the conversation regarding women's equality has become so mature that now it's sharing an unignorable overlap with men's struggles. In fact, to ignore the fact that it's universal is to do the argument a disservice, and undercuts the entire point.

> Terribly sad, maybe the next generation of feminists will be able to break out of the box they've made for themselves, and devote themselves to more general philosophic introspection.

This article was written by a women about a book and recent news story about middle class women and work. There isn't an active conspiracy to not include men, this is a woman talking about her experience as a woman. We should expect in this context that men are not a focal point of this story.

To be fair, it was adapted from a speech called "Notes to My Daughter: On Becoming A Woman" delivered at a historically women's college (it appears to be co-ed now) co-sponsored by the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies department. Some context is lost when linking to print only versions.

> You get the feeling that the author has spent so long thinking of women as 'us' and men as 'them' that she actually sees the two as two completely separate species.

That cuts both ways. Maybe you see gender in terms of "us" and "them" which is why you felt that article didn't apply to you. Just because the subjects are a different gender doesn't mean you can't relate to them.

> Terribly sad, maybe the next generation of feminists will be able to break out of the box they've made for themselves

That's a mighty broad brush you're painting with. Does the author speak for all feminists here, or just herself?

It's a piece about a woman's experiences with feminist movments, its impact on her career and how it's worked out for her.

Does everything have to be about you?

The article is about issues that affect women from a woman's perspective. The article is written in response to another article in the same vein. Moreover they're written to show the change of the author's perspective over time. If what she describes is so gender neutral, do a bunch of pronouns really matter so much?

These are very contextualized, very human conditions. Removing the gender perspective would greatly change (and cheapen) this piece of writing and for what? I'm a man and I can take lessons from a woman's experience. I think it's a good exercise in being flexible and learning more about the self-identity of others.

I found this article illuminating. Women face different social norms and expectations than men do. Maybe some of them don't like this. Maybe some of them do. Regardless, they should be able to write about it from where they are and not to please an audience.

We've been gender-specific the other way for a couple thousand years. Surely you could tolerate a few decades of the opposite.

Two problems: 1) I haven't been around for a couple of thousand years, neither have today's women. 2) Overcompensation is the most common of human traits. Ought we not strive for what is fair today?

I really don't mean any offense because I think you are well-meaning here, but your response reads like "Why wasn't this article written with me in mind??".

I think the answer to that question is: because you are not a working mother.

Sometimes it seems like men are used to being the default audience for everything (probably because for most things, they are), and are surprised when someone writes something without considering their perspective. You see this all the time with boys on Reddit; they are constantly shocked that some of the content there is submitted by women (even Hacker News is guilty of this on occasion).

Yes, you could benefit from some of the key points of this article, and yes the author does think of women as a group with unique interests.

That's because they ARE a group with different experiences. I tried to pretend this wasn't true for a long time, because it is quite inconvenient, but eventually I had to give up and admit it; our society holds women and men to different standards and expectations. I think women are much more likely to notice these differences and become frustrated by them (though not all will, of course). Gendered advertising, objectification, and media failing the Bechdel test are things I notice on a daily basis. It's not surprising to me that a woman would want to write about her experience as a working mother.

"She doesn't think to write about people, but only about women."

Women are people, my friend. It's ok for them to write about their unique experiences.

I had this exact same thought. She laments the fact that women made so many strides in their professional place, but not in demanding a cultural shift to accommodate work/life balance, and yet this is something men have been suffering from since before women's rights were even considered.

When these conversations get to this point, I would love for us all to stand together, rather than split by gender. It would certainly make the working class that much more cohesive and strong.

This is the shallow perspective of many men who dismiss modern feminism -- while feeling morally superior -- because they believe that we live in a post-feminist world where circular logic like 'modern feminism is self-defeatist because it focuses on women's issues' can actually appear to make sense.

You can _only_ approach these issues from the context of a society that is just now beginning to reflect and change with regards to concepts like female CEO's, binary genders, and male sensitivity.

Ignoring this social context is counter-productive, naive, and revealing of the issues that exist in modern gender AND race relations with the still-homogenous-but-slowly-declining social group of the middle class white male.

For that matter, it doesn't address the work/life issues faced by the poor, or immigrants, or non-whites, etc.

I agree with you that men also face issues of work/life balance, but it seems unreasonable to expect everybody, every time they speak about a topic, to address all tangentially related topics.

It's not a zero-sum game. By addressing work/life balance issues for women, a topic which she has personal experience with, the author is not depriving other related issues of oxygen.

I think it's okay for a person or group to tackle one issue at a time. Other individuals and groups can tackle other issues. No harm done.

Is no one anywhere on the internet allowed to write something that doesn't speak directly to you?

A genericized article, while perhaps (or perhaps not) being able to make "every argument equally well" would not have been nearly as interesting or topical.

It's this that reenforces dichotomies that perpetuates the issues of inequality ...

>You get the feeling that the author has spent so long thinking of women as 'us' and men as 'them' that she actually sees the two as two completely separate species.

As is the case with most feminists of today. This is sexism by itself which they don't understand well and the main problem arises simply because they look at things in an extremely binary fashion - If 'something' is sexism or not or if it offends them or not. This is the reason why I am extremely scared (not exaggerating) to sit next to women in tech conferences these days - Simply because I fear I might end up offending them in one way or the other, by doing something I do regularly (like talking about a USB pendrive or a Mac mini) which might have sexual double meanings, which they would then create a huge drama about.

Spot on Ryan.

It seems like you think of women as "them" as well. Have you tried listening to what women are trying to tell you, rather than assuming that half the population is so fundamentally irrational that you need to avoid them in public?

Some advice from John Scalzi: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/09/06/shut-up-and-listen/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com