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Comment by hbags | Hacker News Reader

I think it's absolutely disgusting that you criticize the victim for documenting what happened to her.

It's despicable and downright fucking evil that you basically accuse her of sharing her story solely because she wants attention.

The worst part of your god-awful post is that it's currently pinned to the top of this board.

The fact that your disgusting, insensitive post is at the top is why women don't work in tech. They don't want to have to deal with assholes like you who have nothing better to do than say "she should do X instead of sharing her story", or whatever else you want to do to silence her, and shame her for sharing her story.

She is brave for doing anything, because she knew the world is full of assholes like you: cowardly bigots who will criticize ANY action she takes.

I'm sorry she had a problem. And I'm more sorry that HN has degraded to the point where a cowardly attack from a piece of shit like you is pinned to the top.

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All I can think of in response to this diatribe is a line from The Big Lebowski:

"You're not wrong, Walter. You're just an asshole."

Seriously, dude; chill. You can communicate your (not incorrect) point so very much more effectively without ragefacing all over the person you're replying to. It gets in the way of successful communication, and probably does horrible things for your blood pressure to boot.

I disagree. Of the comments I've read here so far, I agreed with hbags the most. There are plenty of more measured responses to be found here, but none that captured how I felt as well as hbags. I'm not someone who holds grudges, and I accept we all sometimes say things without understanding what we imply, but in the moment I was glad someone could give voice to how I felt.

I'm not dumb enough to try to change the stripes on a proudly bigoted jerk like Meritt.

I just want anybody who sees his spew to know that his opinion is not the only one. I want any human who is harassed to know that if they share their story after the fact, that's good.

And they shouldn't worry about the fact that some utterly worthless assholes like Meritt will try to shame them for speaking out. They shouldn't be ashamed if they were too afraid, too shy, or too confused to respond in the moment.

It is GOOD that we share these stories. It is GOOD that we move towards a world where these things happen less often.

And the utterly worthless assholes like Meritt who want to shame people for sharing their stories... they might be well represented in HN, but they're a minority of normal humans.

And I'd like other potential Meritt's to realize how utterly disgusting it is that he tried to shame the victim into silence.

I'm fine with a bit of profanity and would like to see more, personally. But when your comment is basically nothing but invective, you don't really have a leg to stand on when you're calling someone else worthless.

And I'd like other potential Meritt's to realize how utterly disgusting it is that he tried to shame the victim into silence.

Meritt said 'say something right then and there, it's more effective. Then write a blog post about that instead'. Whether that's true or not could be up for debate (likewise the victim's responsibility to do something), but you have to be pretty one-eyed to read that as shaming the victim into silence rather than encouraging the victim into action.

No. what Merritt said that if you don't say something right there and then you should never be allowed to say anything.

He's an asshole and a bully. If a victim doesn't protest withim his designated free-speech zone he doesn't want them to protest at all.

Hbags, you are full of shit.

Merritt said the behavior was unacceptable and the way to fix it is to address it when it occurs. Followed by the comment:

--- "Running off to write yet another gender-division-in-the-tech-world blog which will be read, primarily, by the sort of folk who already agree with you isn't going to make nearly as much of a difference as taking care of issues promptly". ---

Then said that a story about a bad situation where the person spoke up about it would be a great story that would spread "like wildfire".

At absolutely NO point in Merritt's short post was it said that if you don't speak up when you are uncomfortable or accosted, you should never be allowed to say anything about it.

You owe Merritt an apology for straight out lying about the content and intent of their comment and repeatedly attacking their character based solely on the things you invented (then repeated) in this thread.

You owe Merritt an apology

No way. Meritt clearly attempted to shame her for writing about something that, for whatever reason, she didn't confront immediately.

He's a censor. He's shaming her for protesting outside his designated free-speech zone. Fuck him.

Repeating your accusations doesn't make them true.

Knock your vile rhetoric and bullying off for five seconds and quote, for all of us, the specific sentence or more from Merritt's comment where he shamed the author, implied or supported censoring her, or said that she should not be able to post about her experience.

It is a simple request. I'm not asking you to irrefutably prove your ability to bend spoons with your mind. Merritt's comment was quite short. Just copy and paste the precise part of his or her message where what you keep attacking them for is actually stated or even implied.

Don't worry, we'll all wait. Go ahead.

So. Nothing. Exactly as I thought.

[OT]

> about: hell-banned by bigoted assholes

I don't see any evidence of you being hellbanned^. Furthermore, hellbanning is (typically, at least) an automated process. It is done by an algorithm that evaluates the quality of your posts using their score as the metric of quality. At the time that I am writing this, this seems to be your only post in this thread that has been voted into the negatives.

^ I have showdead turned on, so unless you deleted the comments that you have made since being hellbanned, I would see them in your comment history.

No, he never said or even intimated "don't write about it". He said that writing this article this way would only be read by people who already agree. He said it would be more effective to be proactive at the time. I disagree with him about such a thing spreading like wildfire, but there is nothing in what he said that meant "don't write at all". That's your projection. He said "if you do A, it won't be as effective as B".

The person who is being an arsehole and a bully is you, naming, shaming, strawmanning, abusing, and being generally vituperative.

> He said it would be more effective to be proactive at the time. I disagree with him about such a thing spreading like wildfire

He didn't say that being proactive at the time would spread like wildfire, he said that being proactive at the time and writing about that experience afterward would.

Would it? I personally doubt that. Do you have an example of something like that working? Or is that just speculation?

> Would it?

I think it would draw more attention and useful discussion from people interested in doing more than emoting sympathy, complaining about discussions of women's negative experiences, or discussing abstractly whether addressing the situation in the moment would be more productive.

Whether it would actually spread any more is another question, and one on which I don't have a strong feeling about.

In other words: It is just speculation. You (apparently) do not have a real world example to cite.

I am female. I have blogged before about some of my struggles with the glass ceiling, etc. It got no attention. Perhaps I was doing something wrong. But, as someone who has firsthand experience which contradicts your suggestion, I would be genuinely interested in seeing actual evidence. If I can find an example that works, I would love to follow that. I can't find it.

Thanks.

I don't think 'dragonwriter is suggesting what you think he is suggesting.

> In other words: It is just speculation.

No, in other words, I'm not the person that made the "wildfire" claim, just someone who clarified someone else's presentation of it, and I'm not even trying to support it, though I do think the recommendation made in the post in which it is presented is good for other reasons besides how the recommended action would (or would not) accelerate the spread of the story.

Yep, that's what I meant. And to be specific, I don't think if the article was "I asserted myself with the groper and he withdrew" would spread like wildfire. It wouldn't reach a particularly different audience to this one, methinks.

Well, I'd say the group interested in and reposting/linking a story of "Addressing the problem directly works" would be very different in composition to the group that tends to repost/link a story of "Bad things happen" alone.

But I wouldn't be surprised if the size/scope/impact of the two groups was about the same.

> No. what Merritt said that if you don't say something right there and then you should never be allowed to say anything.

No, he says, explicitly, that not saying anything there and then but blogging about it later won't be as effective in producing the desired change.

He does not say that people shouldn't be allowed to talk about it after the fact without addressing it immediately, he says that doing so is not the ideal choice if the goal is to actually deal with the problem.

There's a universe of difference between what he said and your characterization.

Sorry, but this is part of a pattern. You may feel OK with treating this as an isolated incident, but it's not. It deserves to be lumped into a category of common responses to stuff like this: victim blaming and derailing.

It does approximately nothing to prevent a situation like this from happening. It puts the onus on a woman to deal with other people's utterly unacceptable behavior. It erases the responsibility not just of the aggressor, but everyone else in the room with her who did nothing.

I'm sure it's pure coincidence this also divests the commenter from any obligation to talk seriously about these issues.

How many more caveats do I need? I even specified that the concept was up for debate and that it wasn't the victim's responsibility to do anything.

everyone else in the room with her Unless everyone else in the room was attending to the interaction of her and that one guy, this is hyperbole and doesn't help. If I'm in a conversation on one side of the room, do you really expect me to run over and forbid someone putting their hand on someone else's leg, despite not being aware of their previous conversation?

Anyway, if you want to talk about derailing, how about we talk about how this stupid large thread is focusing almost entirely on the preamble of the essay, and not the core theme that women aren't treated as being intellectually capable by the group? A large thread that is inflamed by throwing abuse around? How does this help the author resolve her article's thematic problem, being that her mind isn't respected?

Hey, I'm with you on the last part.

I'm addressing the fact that merrit's comment has no merit, and it's safe to pigeonhole it as worthless. The debate in this thread is whether or not it's helpful, and I weighed in, trying to talk about it at a somewhat higher level.

As far as "everyone else in the room" is concerned, that's absurd— it's a false dichotomy, excluded middle, etc. Rather than just write it off, think about it in good faith for like five minutes. How you would approach an ambiguous situation like this?

How about you ask? Apologize if you've intruded? You can all laugh it off — "ha, sorry, I thought you might be one of those guys" — and now you've broken the ice.

Nobody's asking you to be Superman zipping around the room, let alone the entire world. But there's a world of difference between that and just keeping an eye out once in a while.

Incidentally, in my mind, this counts as a productive conversation and not derailment— if more dudes showed less tolerance for this kind of bullshit, the world would be a better place.

On the 'everyone else in the room', you're effectively blaming some people for not responding to something they were unaware of, is my point.

In any case, look at what happened. There was the initial hug, and a subtle signal 'no' was sent'. There was the hand on the leg and a clearer 'no' was sent, at which point it stopped. What is there to intrude upon? As an observer, at want point do you launch into the defense? Stop your conversation because two people over there have initiated flirting, and you have no idea one way or the other that one of them isn't into it?

Breaking into the start of other people's nascent flirting makes you an arsehole. And "I thought you were one of those guys" isn't going to help the mood - it's basically saying to the other party "hey, I thought this guy was a creep". Wait until you have more information that one party isn't interested.

Similarly, with the encounter in the article, jumping in at a point before she was able to resolve it in the article is also robbing her of her own power. She resolved it pretty quickly and moved on to other things. Stepping in with an "is this guy bothering you" before she's even had time to send a clearer nonverbal 'no'? Someone has to be pretty helpless before you jump the gun that quickly.

Yeah, I have to agree. I've burned a dozen bridges and poisoned quite a few wells before I learned that a message like that can actually be much stronger if you step down the rhetoric just a notch.

Easier said than done.

I usually stay away from making blaming statements, but you're an asshat.

Merritt didn't criticize anyone - instead they (she?) offered suggestions for a path to conflict resolution. You, on the other hand, are making a slew of blaming statements that are made up bullshit. What you are angry about, I'm unsure. I'll hazard you don't know either.

Cognitive dissonance at its finest, folks.

Meritt absolutely made blaming statements. Even the most charitable reading of his post is him complaining that she decided to make clickbait.

He tried to shame her and degrade her for having shared her story instead of doing something else.

He's an asshole. Fuck him.

I may be misreading meritt's comment, but it seems to me that meritt is criticizing the author of the article for not addressing the situation when it happened; not criticizing the author for blogging about it. In fact, meritt seems to be suggesting that the author should blog about the incident, though meritt thinks that a blog about the author resolving the situation by confronting it directly would be more effective in promoting productive discussion.

(To be absolutely clear, I am not a fan of criticizing the author for handling or not handling the situation in any particular way.)

I might be reading that all wrong; certainly I am being charitable to meritt and giving him/her the benefit of the doubt. There is a decent chance that I've gone to far, and that you are entirely correct. However your "charitable" reading of his/her post is certainly not the "most charitable".

Sometimes you're wrong. You're wrong now.

There are ZERO emotions in Merrit's comment. I understand you are upset about this, but really Merrit isn't the bad guy. You should think about why and try to not blame others for how you feel about it. This type of behavior isn't healthy for any of us.

Sorry I called you an asshat. I hope you figure it out.

That comment is 'despicable and downright fucking evil'? Why does everything have to be done at maximum emotional output these days? What about 'Hey, this isn't on, please don't do that'?

As soon as you start insulting someone, they will not internalise any lesson you're trying to make. They may moderate their behaviour out of fear of backlash, but they will shutdown any attempt to listen to the root cause of your problem.

"After doing so, blog about what happened...."

"I think it's absolutely disgusting that you criticize the victim for documenting what happened to her."

Posted in reply to the wrong comment, maybe?

I think you are wildly misinterpreting merrit.

The point is not that blogging about it is bad, but that calling people out on the spot is even better, and people should do it more. Of course it's frightening, and of course it's harder - I'm not sure I would've done it in a similar situation if I were a female, and that's exactly why outside encouragement is important.

I personally would like it very much if people - both male and female - would react more by calling out unwanted behavior right on the spot, and I hope OP will feel encouraged to do so if something like this happens again in the future, knowing at least that she has the support of some people on HN.

> I personally would like it very much if people - both male and female - would react more by calling out unwanted behavior right on the spot

Perhaps somewhat ironically, this is what 'hbags is doing here.

What the heck did I just read? Look you obviously have the best intentions and you seem to be very emotionally invested in this topic and that's honestly great, really it is. While sometimes it can be impersonal and a tad cold, it seems our community tries to leave ego at the door (sometimes) and make level headed analysis in order to seek greater understanding or offer advice. Meritt's statement had merit and if you hadn't based your whole argument on the feelings it immediately stirred in you, you might have seen the truth in what he said.

Discrimination and harassment like what happened to the blogger truly is a horrendous glitch in humanity that needs to be addressed. We've been addressing it for the last few decades and have made great strides but the problem persists. Everyone should absolutely be letting their story be heard but we need to start nipping this in the bud.

I don't think anyone here actually blames Arianna for not saying anything at the time. It's very intimidating to stand up against your assailant. But maybe if we just talked about confronting these types of people we would all have more mental preparation and courage to stick up for ourselves in the moment. Most parts of the western world are civilized enough that a simple stern "Stop touching me" is enough to end it. Be brave and stand for what you believe in! You have nothing to fear but allowing these public interactions and maintaining status quo.

100% agree.

I shouldn't even bother commenting here and this won't be the first time I'm giving up on HN, but seeing the replies you're getting I couldn't leave without at least offering you my support and letting the community know what a sick and twisted bunch of people tech, HN, pg, reddit and the rest of you are. Absolutely disgusting bunch of people. And that's coming from a privileged white male.

The replies that comment is getting are basically "don't be so vitriolic, calm down and you'll get your message across better", and you classify this as 'absolutely disgusting' and 'twisted'?

> this won't be the first time I'm giving up on HN,

Giving up...you're doing it wrong.

As far as I can tell, pg is not involved with this discussion at all. Was there an earlier discussion about this incident that I am missing?

I prefer using speech to communicate, dialog, argue, persuade.

I dislike using speech to bully, name call, police.

Jesus christ you must have SERIOUS emotional issues.

You know how this situation should have been actually handled?

"Hey [groper], get your hands off me, I don't appreciate being touched by someone I don't know and I don't appreciate your remarks either."

10 seconds, situation over. But instead, OP decided to write a novel on this "experience", and generalized to: meetups, women, and tech. Now if other women read this, they will have fear and hostility instilled in them because scumbags like OP don't know how to deal with real life and just want e-attention.

What makes you think that "get your hands off me" would be enough for a statistically significant subset of people who are convinced that this isn't a problem, let alone their problem? On what planet do you live where people won't find yet another way to 20/20 hindsight somebody's past actions?

You and everyone else who reflexively criticizes someone who dares complain about how they're treated? It's social DoS. A single person can't possibly meet the arbitrary demands of a hostile reader. Folks — mostly men — pile on enough reasons why she's Doing It Wrong, and safely write it off.

And the part where it's her fault for instilling "fear and hostility" because a man groped her and she talked about it is a breathtaking feat of inverted logic.

You know how this situation should have been actually handled?

Men shouldn't grope women they don't know. (yes, okay, people in general shouldn't grope strangers, not all men, not all women, okay, thanks.)

0 seconds; situation never happened, and you never added to the misogyny on HN.

Everyone needs to feel like they belong somewhere. They need a cause.

Your cause is hatred of white men and you find solace with others of the same persuasion.

But you're still wrong, and the angry ranting is just ignored by people, even if they agree with some of your points.

FYI.

> Your cause is hatred of white men and you find solace with others of the same persuasion.

You're seeing a problem and making it worse. Please stop.

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