Biology-Online.org, "Urban Whores," And The Many Axes Of Douchebaggery | Hacker News Reader

Biology-Online.org, "Urban Whores," And The Many Axes Of Douchebaggery

popehat.com

55 pointsDanBC17 comments

> "Ofek" clearly intended "whore" to be a gendered slur.

This is not at all clear to me. Clearly "Ofek" is a jerk with a strong sense of entitlement, but in the context of scientists being motivated by money as opposed to pure altruism, this is a common enough term. Here's an example of two men arguing in the media:

http://www.mmamania.com/2013/6/11/4417740/nick-diaz-unretire...

"Clearly" is frequently a code word for "I can't actually support this argument."

Here's another example from the comments: "Especially, calling a black woman "urban whore" is sexist and racist." Essentially, there's this point of view that if you're a jerk towards a straight white man, you're just a jerk, but if you're a jerk to some protected class, then you're clearly being a jerk for sexist or racist motives.

I dislike this attitude because it undermines being legitimately inclusive. It's the boy who cried wolf -- if people are crying "sexism" every time they get cut off on the freeway, then people learn to ignore it.

So, what you're arguing is that a good way to improve inclusivity is to be open-minded when someone calls a woman a "whore"?

I think he was arguing is that being a "jerk" is not okay period. You don't need to appeal to sexism or racism to make the point that someone is being a jerk. Being a jerk is sufficiently bad that it should be enough to point that out.

It's about the precise kind of jerk this person was being. And I agree with the GP, it seemed more like he meant whore in the sense of doing things for money that should be done for free. I'm not defending it, obviously it's uncalled for, but it strikes me that people looking for something will find it, if you know what I mean. I could be wrong, I'm just saying it doesn't seem clear-cut to me.

Why does it matter that the jerk be properly classified?

If you know why people behave like they do, it's easier to make them stop.

Because it should be bad enough that the guy is a jerk without attempting to permanently label him as a sexist and/or a racist when there's a good chance that he might not be.

Most agree that he is a scumbag who said something that he shouldn't, but that doesn't mean he's racist or sexist.

He called her a whore because its a universal, non-gendered term for a sell-out. If a person thinks that its a gendered term, then that person is an idiot because there are lots of male and trans-gender prostitutes. That being said He's both wrong and hypocritical for accusing her of being a sell-out, especially when you consider he wanted her content for the sole purpose of making money off of it. She should be entitled to make money off of her work, especially when another entity is going to be.

He most likely called her an "Urban Whore," as a play on words using the title of her site. He probably thought it was clever, but as we already established, he's an asshole. Assholes often exhibit poor judgement. Yet when an African American woman (or anyone else) calls herself an Urban Scientist, she loses the right to be genuinely offended by the use of the term Urban. I didn't see her state that she was offended by the word, but nobody else really needs to be offended by it on her behalf. Instead, focus on the fact that this guy's an asshole for calling a person a whore for not giving him free content so he could make money.

There's a potential that he meant to be both sexist and racist, but there isn't really any way to know for sure. That's why its stupid to suggest that he was either of those things.

Does it really matter that an asshole is accurately classified? Not really, but if we are going to talk about something, we might as well be accurate about it.

I suspect that "gendered term" is not very well-defined, and certainly I don't have a very good model of what it means.

Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure:

> there are lots of male and trans-gender prostitutes.

It does not automatically follow from this that "whore" is not a gendered term, and nor does it follow that anyone who thinks "whore" is a gendered term is an idiot.

(I'm sure some people have a definition of "gendered term" which implies "can only be literally true of one gender". But I doubt that everyone agrees on that definition, and I doubt that's how it's generally used.)

If you think the fact that she's a woman is what matters here then it's you who's being exclusionary.

I agree that "whore yourself out" etc are very common, and are not gendered insults.

I agree that people who are jerks need to be called out on it, even if they are jerks to straight white males and even if they don't use protected class information to be a jerk.

Still, here's a woman doing work to promote science, and she politely rejects a request to work for free (See also Fuck You. Pay Me.) and who not only gets called a whore in return, but has her blog discussing it pulled by Scientific American.

I don't know SciAm's side, but it's pretty lousy and that's a shame because collected back issues of that magazine at car boots at jumble sales got people interested in math or computing. (Martin Gardner).

Whore (and slut) is clearly gendered, even when used freely against either gender. It is "powerful" against women for all the obvious reasons, and it is "powerful" against men because it would also be meant to be/taken as emasculating.

As it always is when humans communicate, context is everything http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yDMd9g1oSA&feature=share&lis...

When two men use that word between each other the expectation we all have around what that means and implies is naturally going to be very different than when someone calls a woman that. This really shouldn't even need explaining. The "I don't see colour/race/gender" blindness approach really doesn't work in practice Spock.

Which gender deserves to be called a whore in a professional context? There's nothing acceptable about this behavior.

Her rebuttal was very classy by the way, well done: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9kTZx1vq7c

From an author's point of view - particularly an author who might write about something controversial at some point - knowing how far an editor will stick their neck out for you is probably the primary measure of that editor's usefulness. Doubly so in a format like blogging where the editor doesn't intend to give direct feedback on the author's text.

Now the SciAm bloggers know.

Why does popehat assume Ofek is male?

I don't know.

Ofek seems to be a male given name, or a surname. But I don't know enough about Jewish culture to understand naming conventions.

Here's an editor for Biology Online calling Ofek a male (http://www.biology-online.org/biology-forum/post-157185.html...)

Facebook searches return a few Ofeks who are not male.

i was reading until he played the sexism card. screw that. the bad guys there deserve to be put down socially for many dumb actions but sexism? just because she used the whore word when cursing? its probably 3 woman in the discussion to begin with. cursing is cursing. if you focus on the meaning you are overthinking it.

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