Hacker News Reader

I also want to mention that we were super scared of publishing our individual experiences for this exact fear and questioning of our lived experience.

View on HN

Thanks for the links.

A question - Do you think (or have any information) on if this is particularly worse in tech, than in other industries?

Why does this even remotely matter?

We're in tech. This is our home. Let's clean it up.

I worked for less than 5 months in a non-tech industry (and in a female-majority workplace) to form any opinion on that.

@danilocampos - I think it matters for getting to a solution. If there's something inherent in tech, or its male work force that makes the problem worse, then knowing that might help get at the root of the problem a little faster.

We already understand the roots of the problem quite well... comparing to other industries won't make much difference.

1. Male-dominated environment, women are a significant minority.

2. Inexcusable tolerance of sexist behavior - not calling it out when we see it.

3. "Why are you blaming me? I'm not one of those guys. Men might listen to you if you'd just stop the blanket accusations." (extra credit: count how many comments on this thread can be reduced to that sentiment.)

"Have you stopped enabling sexism in tech?". That's what most of the replies sound like to me. Sort of like "have you stopped beating your wife?". Hard to come up with a good response without looking guilty isn't it?

it should be noted that pointing out #3 doesn't make it an invalid point, and it certainly has nothing to do with why the issue exists in the first place.

The problem, at it's root, is a set of self-reinforcing cycles, such as:

1. More men than women

2. Male harrasers feel safe to harass women

3. Women do not feel welcome

4. Women leave

5. Goto 1

Or:

1. Harassers target women in ways that are deniable and/or less visible

2. Well meaning men assume that if they if don't see it, it must not be happening very often

3. Women get tired of having their personal experiences questioned, denied, dismissed, and belittled

4. Women stay silent, or leave

5. The impression among bystander men that this must not happen that often is strengthened, emboldening harassers

6. Goto 1

Etc.

Given that, it is entirely fair to say to non-harrasser men that if they are not actively part of the solution, they are still pàrt if the problem.

And after the umpteenth time of someone telling me I'm a terrible person ... I decide to be terrible by not caring about it anymore.

This is why your attitude is actively hurting you. It's driving away people like me, who actually agree with the basic premise that women should be treated equally.

Being part of of the problem (that is, tacitly consenting to bad behavior by staying silent and not confronting it directly) does not make you a terrible person, or even a bad one. It just means that you are part of the problem.

The thing is, you can't expect a cookie for not doing terrible things. Not doing terrible things is the absolute minimum that is expected of you as an adult member of society. Only doing the bare minimum doesn't make you a good person or a bad one, but it shouldn't really be surprising that the great majority of people who are merely not doing terrible things have an inertia that keeps things from improving, and are thus part of the problem.

Logically speaking, since folks with your attitude are a large part of the reason people like me don't bother, wouldn't that also make you, and your actions here, a part of the problem?

And wouldn't that imply the solution is to stop doing what you're doing?

So in essence, didn't you just admonish yourself?

Let's just say that your retort, "well I would have helped if only you didn't make such a big deal about it", is awfully convenient as an excuse to do nothing (and is very nearly the same as the 'tone argument'). Because, of course, if no one makes a big deal about something, that also provides an excuse.

And thankfully that isn't what I said, because I agree that would be a ridiculous argument.

What I said is that after getting blamed constantly for no other reason than being born with a cock I've stopped caring what the people doing the blaming think.

Another way to look at it is like this:

Men are not stupid. They know if they've been sexist or not. When you blame them for shit they know they are not involved in, it means they cannot trust you when you blame other men for shit they didn't witness.

How can I be more clear about this? You are not a terrible person, and are not to blame.

Being part of the problem, or more precisely, part of a problematic system) does not mean that the problem is your fault, or that you have a duty to fix it.

Congratulations, you have met your basic societal obligations. You are off the hook. You are free to look the other way rather than confront or condemn sexism when you encounter it, in person or online.

That's black/white thinking. Folks do a lot of things in a lot of spheres. Not doing one terrible thing doesn't imply they're doing nothing else at all.

Take off the blinders - there're a lot more issues in the world than this one. Lots of people just don't have the emotional energy to invest in all of them, or even in very many of them.

Well, sure. There are many issues on which I am still part of the problem. As I said, that doesn't make me a bad person.

Comparing the relative severity of any injustice or crime doesn't help solve it.

I only clicked on one of those links because I recognised it: https://medium.com/@geeekcore1/d96f431f4e8e

That article doesn't seem like retaliation, it seems like a response. JAH herself has responded to that article and simply said the things mentioned aren't relevant and only brought up because she was female.

Minor nitpick: I went back to find the links in the article, and it wasn't clear on the first read that the 'this is what happens...' sentence was a whole slew of individually linked words.

Noticed that you took the time to reformat the html that you initially pasted over. Thanks for taking the time to do that for us :).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com