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Comment by Peroni | Hacker News Reader

The fact that this post is getting so much attention is baffling me. There is literally nothing in this story to indicate that the name made any difference.

It's blatant confirmation bias. Nothing more.

Allow me to state, once again, there is absolutely no denying that sexism exists and that it's an issue that needs to (and eventually will) change however this article adds absolutely nothing new to the debate.

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He didn't provide empirical evidence because there are already resources for that. This is a personal anecdote and is being shared because personal anecdotes are effective in making people think in ways that many won't be moved to by statistics.

It's not news and it's not providing any objective data, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of value.

But it happened in the "late 90s." One anecdote from 15 years ago is not really of much value today, IMO.

When it comes to sexual bias, hacker news readers/commenters generally discard the "evidence" bit. And of course, nobody mentions the author's obvious anti-male and age bias ("but when I viewed it through the skewed view of middle-aged men who thought I was a woman").

One stereotype used as a rhetorical device doesn't imply he actually thinks worse of "middle-aged men" than any other group. That was just the relevant stereotype for the situation.

I'm a male and I'm tired of hearing "there is absolutely no denying that sexism exists" because it's not "sexism", it's normalization of gendered oppression on a cultural level. Girls and young women are taught to be domestic, to not aspire to men's work, and they are taught half-consciously, culturally, through the media and activities they are made to take part in. Boys are taught that their competence is natural and are segregated socially and often physically from living, playing, and interacting with girls, and the culture of "girl-things"[1]. "The Gender Trap" by NYU sociologist Emily Kane documents this, and contains an excellent bibilography for more research on this. It is established academically, but people don't want to hear it -- it's radical feminist nonsense, man-hating (or "self-hating" if you're a male), so we don't have to look at the research.

But men are affected as well. Older men take longer to report symptoms of serious disease to doctors because they are taught that they should be able to handle it. Men are deprived of emotional outlet and expected to live up to impossible standards, foregoing friendships with women in the process. You see all these young men with unrequited love ("friend-zoned") who can't accept friendship with female people and thus must invent strategy to solve the woman-puzzle-box or justification for harassment.

Questioning gender itself is the best solution, logically.

[1] Rough examples for "girl-things" as a phenomenon: A girl can wear blue or pink, but a boy wearing pink is doing a "girl-thing" (I've read that the color scheme was reversed a under a century ago). A young woman can watch an action movie or a romantic comedy, but when a young man watches a chick-flick what is he, gay?

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