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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

She's not threatened because she's a writer, she's threatened because some people in the community are abusive and law enforcement hasn't stepped up and done its job.

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She's a target of the threats because she's a public writer. It's not good and obviously it's not her fault, but sometimes it feels like a woman-in-tech's workday must go something like this according to the articles I see:

7am: coffee

8am: get to work

9am: rape threat from coworker #1

10am: standup meeting

11am: death threat from coworker #2

Those abusers will target any woman they can find. If a woman is not getting abuse from some of them it's only because they haven't found her yet.

That is correct. Abusers, whether male or female, will find their target.

That's not quite true. Women are much more likely to receive threats because they are more vulnerable. Just like bullies pick on those they perceive to be weak, abusers target those they perceive to be easy targets.

Stats or GTFO.

Not everything in life can be apprehended through stats, and sometimes we should be able to simply acknowledge the fact that others are having a hard time because of the way we're shaping our society.

But anyways, here's something that's been posted earlier : "In 2006, researchers from the University of Maryland set up a bunch of fake online accounts and then dispatched them into chat rooms. Accounts with feminine usernames incurred an average of 100 sexually explicit or threatening messages a day. Masculine names received 3.7."

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/women-ar...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060731153456.ht...

PS: feel free to dismiss these numbers.

Aha, so now we're back to talking about online harassment, which is NOT what the title of the linked article is implying.

People in this thread need to make up their minds.

And if you want me to listen to your arguments, don't side with people who are trying to hijack entire populations for their own agenda.

I don't want you to listen to my arguments, I was simply answering to your question about stats. I have often found out that convincing people that didn't want to be convinced took way too much energy.

For the necessary intellectual rigour we need on HN, I cannot allow combining only tangentially related arguments to create a narrative.

"Women are much more likely to receive threats because they are more vulnerable"

So you are saying that women are different and need to be treated in a different way than men? I thought we were trying to avoid this and treat women the same as men?

I think we should treat someone that's receiving death and rape threats on a daily basis differently than someone who does not. That we should treat someone that's more likely to be raped or killed differently than someone who is not that likely. And because the people receiving death and rape threats are also the people more likely getting raped and killed, that makes something considered as "taunting" much more real.

You are right, we should avoid treating women differently than men, that's something we're all able to agree on. That does not mean that men and women in our societies are treated the same as of now.

Women should not be considered as more vulnerable, yet that's how they are perceive, and that's also what they are being taught:

- don't fight, don't fight back

- always smile and be pretty

- don't get angry, that just shows you're hysterical/on your period/pregnant and hormone-crazy

- agree with the males, especially when they make sexist jokes, that makes you really cool

- don't be a feminist and try to improve your condition

We should not treat women differently than men, but letting society/communities/bullies target one group more than the other and then refusing to acknowledge it or to empathize with it, seems like a convenient way of not taking responsability, as a society/community, and not try to improve ourselves.

That's not what she said. She described a number of situations. None of them involved coworkers at all. Where are you getting this from?

That's not what I said either. I said:

"sometimes it feels like a woman-in-tech's workday must go something like this according to the articles I see"

How was this article titled? It didn't say "online harassment of female authors in the gaming industry" which is what it is actually about. The title tried to lump in every woman in the gaming industry, a common tactic. So I get to make my own generalizations just as well as they do.

She didn't identify the other women whose stories she told. It's an assumption that they're all writers.

I think you're reading too much into her tone. The key point is that no skin is thick enough to shrug off this treatment, and it's common for various unidentified women and one identified one in the industry to receive it from the general public. Do you think that's true, or not?

> Anita Sarkeesian once reblogged a Tumblr post of mine and it ended up on Reddit. I got so much hate mail from dudes that I left the internet for three days,

Unfortunately, hate for Anita Sarkeesian will transfer to her associates.

> Nicole Tanner is a former editor of IGN, and was one of the founders of "Girlfight.

Editor/writer. Don't know what Girlfight is.

> Every time I'm interacting with an enthusiastic fan

Another public figure

> Carolyn Petit is an editor for GameSpot.

Editor

There are no anonymous developers here (save for the reblogged post). This is clearly public figures in tech. I'd assume there are less public female figures in tech than there are non-public women in tech.

As for telling them to develop a thick skin, I have no opinion on that. If you are a public figure, you will be subject to this kind of behaviour.

The title of the post pisses me off. If they had just said "Online harassment of female authors", I'd have no complaint to make. But it is clickbait.

I think a big weakness of this article is that it goes from talking about horrible treats from random people to unconscious bias of coworkers without a clear transition. People skimming the article might think that she was getting threats from coworkers. The unconscious bias of developers and the toxicity of the gaming community are very different problems.

Exactly. The HN crowd needs to be smarter when we see articles like this. Demand, as readers, that there are no such mind tricks. Article title must reflect content, not hyperbole or agenda.

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