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Comment by SeanDav | Hacker News Reader

This is a spiteful and misogynistic comment - you do yourself and this community, a large disservice.

Calm down a second. You're obviously taking offense of the phrase "The chick in charge of the Internal Tools team?". While the word is often used in the fairly female hostile line of "I'm off to pick up chicks", it also has a very common usage for an (attractive) young woman in certain demographics.

As far as I can tell, the OP is not trying to make a misogynistic comment on purpose and biting his head off and shouting at him is not going to help the community, or the OP, or your point. If this was an actual misogynistic comments - "A girl in Google? Fire her!" - then the outrage would be well placed. A very commonly used colloquial term, however, at most deserves a polite request to use better language in future.

I understand your point, but even according to your second definition ("an attractive young woman"), it comes across as misogynistic.

Because simply referring to her as "the chick who..." basically implies that she is principally a "chick" -- not a smart woman, not a capable professional, but just a "chick". Outside of professional contexts, it can sometimes be fine, but in commenting on a professional article, it absolutely is demeaning and there is no place for it.

Says the guy named "crazygringo".

>> ("an attractive young woman"), it comes across as misogynistic

No, it doesn't.

I think you should invest in a good dictionary. You're walking on very, very thin ice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

Thank you for the benefit of the doubt. Admittedly, if I cared about being taken seriously, I would've chosen my words more carefully. However, I just felt like dashing off a quick comment to let people know that the core tone of the article is at odds with reality.

Agreed. Even if it's true, I hope that the HN community can all agree that comments like this reflect poorly on us -- lets certainly not reward them.

Or let's just not put words in my fucking mouth by declaring what connotation I had in mind by my use of the word "chick".

Words have connotations whether you mean them or not. It is hard to see how you could not foresee a negative reaction to calling a woman being featured in a professional context a "chick".

Surprisingly, nobody jumped on "crazygringo" when he attacked my usage of a word with a negative connotation.

By the way, if anyone's inclined to fucking ASK why I used that word at any point in the next century, I use words like "dude", "chick", and "radical" because I enjoy the delightful throwback. Such idioms are definitely in my wheelhouse.

Once upon a time the word "misogynistic" actually had real meaning.

But, thanks to mostly people like you, that word has been hugely trivialized to mean not much more well... than anything really.

Let's not burn the OP at the stake just because he used a word that you think is somehow improper. That's something you have to deal with all on your own.

I doubt you would have said the same thing if the post started with "that dude" or "that guy".

Maybe because neither of those words connote vapidity?

What's the feminine alternative to "dude"?

None that occur to me off the top of my head, at least not when speaking about someone negatively. You could always go full-ninja-turtles and call her a dudette. Chick certainly isn't it, though.

According to wikipedia, either "dudette" or "dudess."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dude

Just curious, how offensive is "chick"? I catch myself accidentally using it every once in a while (a vestige of shitty, all-boys Catholic high schooling). Should I be mildly embarrassed or mortified?

Probably older, probably more experienced, subject of a news story, in a fairly professional context? Kind of offensive (IMO).

I think outside of common terms like "chick flick", this is just like using "girls" to refer to adult women - think to yourself, if you replaced the term with something like "boy" or "dude" how would you sound?

I don't really go on crusades about these particular uses of words because I feel there are better fights to fight, but I would never refer to a man in this particular context as a dude. Maybe I'm overly politically correct, but I try to be respectful to everyone.

It depends. If you're using it in a negative statement, it tends to connote a woman who isn't very smart. If you're making a positive statement, I think it would be roughly equivalent in formality to calling someone a "babe," without the connotation of being pretty. So still don't use it to talk about someone in a professional context.

If you're a PC douchebag who actively seeks out opportunities to be offended by things, then, sure. Otherwise, I wouldn't recommend it.

Absolutely depends. Some people find "chick" just about as offensive as "nigger", while some people don't care in the slightest. I've known a number of women who freely use "chick" to refer to themselves or their friends.

About as offensive as "geezer" or "cracker".

In this context it reads as highly dismissive.

No, it's not. It's the truth.

"chick"

I don't have to go past that word, to have a problem with your comment in this context.

Maybe you should be more open-minded then.

I'm only responding to this because your comment is #1 on the page right now.

The factuality of your comment has nothing to do with it.

Calling her a "chick" is like calling Larry Page a "boy toy" -- the word is used largely in sexual situations ("picking up chicks"), and is incredibly unprofessional and demeaning in a professional context like the workplace, or Hacker News.

And talking about the Internal Tools team as "that shit" is equally unprofessional and demeaning to everyone who works on it.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

>Calling her a "chick" is like calling Larry Page a "boy toy" -- the word is used largely in sexual situations ("picking up chicks"), and is incredibly unprofessional and demeaning in a professional context like the workplace, or Hacker News.

Then why don't you just ask what I meant by "chick" rather than insisting I was being sexist?

> And talking about the Internal Tools team as "that shit" is equally unprofessional and demeaning to everyone who works on it.

More demeaning than the comment itself, in which I actively demean the team by pointing out that everyone else in the company laughs at them?

"And talking about the Internal Tools team as "that shit" is equally unprofessional and demeaning to everyone who works on it."

Really? Did you go around and ask everyone who works there if they feel "it's unprofessional and demeaning"? Or is it just you who feels that way?

Please don't blow this out of proportion.

How is it misogynistic?

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