Comment by danshapiro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danshapiro | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate the authors taking the time to write this (unfortunately this HN comment page emphasizes the uphill climb ahead). But there's one thing in particular I, selfishly, appreciated them addressing:

"Does this mean we’re going to get angry at you if you try to help and get it wrong?"

This fear was something that kept me from speaking out for many years. I'm a guy in tech and I want to see change occur but I'm ignorant about these things. I don't truly understand the challenges that women face in our industry. And because I'm relatively ignorant, I worry that I might say something that was intended as supportive but winds up contributing to the problem: white-knighting, disempowering, calling attention to something that the person affected wanted to leave alone.

Personally, I've come to terms that I'm going to try my best and risk screwing up occasionally. It's scary but I think it's better than the alternative of sitting by and doing nothing. But it makes me feel a lot better to hear that I'm not alone in worrying about this.

Compare that with http://jacobian.org/writing/what-can-men-do/ , which is linked to in the OP in which he criticizes Jeff Atwood for doing it wrong. So wrong that he won't even link to him, even though he acknowledges that his intentions are good.

Edited to fix pronoun.

Psssst. The OP of this article who criticizes Jeff is Jacob Kaplan-Moss. ie: A male.

Well, burst my bubble and call me Slim.

I assumed that was a dig at Jeff Atwood, who initially refused to link to Shanley's piece on the grounds that it was hateful.

I wasn't aware of that context. Generally, I'm not a fan of not linking to pieces you're criticizing.

the poster is misrepresenting Jeff Atwood, see my response to him.

That isn't actually what he said, and this is the sort of thing that hurts relations rather than helps them.

What he said is that he doesn't link to Shanley in general because all of her stuff is so vitriolic. He then went on to post links to twitter posts of her's showing where she has been extremely vitriolic.

He stated that his reasoning is that he does not want to send people to such a place.

He didn't simply refuse to link to "Shanley's piece", he refused to link to Shanley at all. But it should be noted that he did link to other authors who are feminist in nature. He has every right to have a problem with a specific person for non-gender reasons, and your portrayal of him otherwise is unfair and deserves to be moderated in order to preserve actual conversation.

I appreciate the clarification of Jeff's position and rationale. The only point I was making is that the non-linking struck me as a reference to Jeff not linking to Shanley.

I think this is fine. If you make a bad mistake, even with good intentions, it is reasonable for others to be angry at you. "I was trying" is not a universal defense.

"I was trying, I see what I did wrong, thank you for the correction and I'll try to do better next time," however, goes a long way. If Jeff acknowledges his mistakes -- supposing he is convinced they are mistakes -- and makes an honest attempt to be better, anger will likely turn into forgiveness.

Is using the same title as somebody else on a piece about the same topic as the other one really a "bad mistake"?

That is not the only thing that was criticized about what Atwood said.

> appropriating and refusing to acknowledge earlier works from women—specifically, appropriating Shanley’s identically-titled, incredibly-similar “What Can Men Do?,”

You mean two different human beings thought about blogging about a popular tech issue? With an obvious title? Atwood must feel ashamed. What an appropriator.

This wonderful article by Julie Pagano might be of interest to you! http://juliepagano.com/blog/2014/05/03/ally-smells-fear-of-s...

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