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Comment by babs474 | Hacker News Reader

Interesting that HN keeps killing threads on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6360328

A stubborn refusal to confront the problem is what helps these attitudes fester.

Probably a combination of fatigue and not wanting to deal with the toxicity these type of threads tend to be utterly soaked in. "Confronting the problem" is hard in the company of reasoned discussion and nigh-impossible in the face of extremists.

*edit

And that's why I flagged it. Not because I'm some horrible sexist, or because I want women to fail, but because I don't want HN turning into Tumblr or SRS. On top of all that, they also tend to be the worst kind of predictable and boring - i.e. the complete polar opposite of what great HN content is. No thanks.

Extremists? Is that what you call anyone who isn't a sexist like you? And what does SRS have to do with anything? I left reddit to get away from the r/mensrights freaks like you so you might want to keep your bullshit there.

Wow, defensive AND insulting. Thanks for proving my point about toxicity and boring-ness.

Please don't attack other users personally. It's never necessary, makes you look mean, and poisons the well for everybody.

I didn't read that as the extremists being anti-sexists. In some recent threads on these topics, I've seen some excellent reasoned thought from the anti-sexists and some extremely childish behaviour from people with the opposite opinions.

It could mean either, or both, with or without justification. So, no reason to get irate.

Wait, what's SRS?

r/shitredditsays over on reddit.com - basically, take Tumblr feminism (radical third wave) and elevate it to the point where it becomes a parody of itself. It's a meta-sub (a sub who's point it is to comment or link to other subs) that puts on airs that they exist for calling out shitty comments on reddit.

In reality, they're known for invading threads, vote abuse, a level of dogmatism and doublethink that would make a Christian fundamentalist blush, and generally being a net negative influence on the site.

Ah, it's a reddit thing. Thanks.

Sounds like they are fun and well-loved. :/

(edit: this thread has, indeed, been voted off the front page once again.)

I expect this will be voted off too, it already seems to be lower-placed than it ought to be given the number of upvotes. I posted (what I though to be) a very interesting article on Popehat about free speech and the costs contained within a few days ago:

http://www.popehat.com/2013/09/10/speech-and-consequences/

Unfortunately it talked about the Business Insider issue, so was immediately flagged off the front page.

>> this thread has, indeed, been voted off the front page once again. <<

Keep sweeping under the rug, it'll hold lots.

HN has a very thin veneer of professionalism and intelligence only kept in place by the severely limited range of topics we can comment on.

If you read any political, social, gender or non-STEM science based comments (prior to the story being killed) you get the same disgusting mix of sexism, racism, and general ignorance you'd find on reddit. Luckily for HN's image the flag feature quickly hides such ugliness.

Except Snowden is a hero, so we're cool with any and all threads speculating on his current activities.

I think perhaps the problem here is a poorly defined concept of "confront the problem".

What exactly does it mean to confront the problem? I am not planning on giving a sexist presentation so... problem confronted? Am I suppose to do something to prevent others from giving sexist presentations too? I am not in a position to do that, and very few people are (how many people on HN actually run conferences?).

I don't see any actionable call to arms.

There's not much new that can be said, and the threads are always full of people with weird, vile, opinions bickering about what is or isn't acceptable behaviour, coming up with bizarre scenarios for why it's actually fine to call a woman a stupid cunt in the workplace.

Exactly. These threads do nothing but give everybody (involved, or otherwise) a platform on which to pat their own back.

Not too long ago HN was dominated by a wave of these stories that was not equaled until the NSA revelations.

HN has had several stories this week on the Techchrunch Disrupt fiasco. The Business Insider story, not so much.

Even the stories on Disrupt were very quickly flagged off the front page. Then, when the BI story broke I saw multiple comments asking "What was the Disrupt story?"

The lesson is that flagging this stuff off the page works tremendously well.

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