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Comment by neilellis | Hacker News Reader

The essential problem here is that we're still talking about men telling women what they need to do. Because, hey it's their problem.

Let's just get it clear, it is all about what we (men) need to do. Slavery wasn't an African person's fault. Xenophobia isn't a problem for foreigners to sort out.

There is nothing wrong with realising that we have a privilege over another group in society and making efforts to become aware of that and to work against it as best we can. What is wrong is assuming it's something that the people we have privilege over need to combat themselves.

One last analogy:

Hey poor person, work harder and then you can inherit money like I did.

PS: Can someone explain the downvote? (PPS: it would be nice for reasons to be given for downvotes, because as a frequent user, commenter and submitter it feels pretty rubbish being down-voted without knowing why)

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First, when you say, "slavery wasn't an African person's fault", I have to assume you are talking about Slavery in recent American history and not Slavery as a thing throughout history. Humankind is at fault there because almost every race and culture did it at some point.

Second, if I understand it correctly, I think maybe people downvoted you (not me) because your statement implies (however unintended) that without men doing something about it, women cant close the pay gap on their own. Making the statement a bit leaner, it could be interpreted as, "Without men doing it for them, women cant close the gap". Which is all kinds of incorrect.

Anyway, I don't think you meant it that way, but as you can see from the "slavery" example, it's easy for us to be unaware of our own racial, cultural, historical, sexual, and sociological bias. Myself included.

Fair comment, it's hard to communicate anything well :) Certainly not my intention, my emphasis is it is men's responsibility to help reduce gender inequality, not our privilege :-)

Though again I disagree with people using down votes to disagree with an opinion :-)

Complaining a lot about downvotes is also sometimes a good way to earn them...

Ah I see, if you suggest there is something wrong with the system you get penalised by the system. My mistake :-)

If you suggest it in a thread about something entirely different, sure~

If you post about the system in a thread about the system, there won't be downvotes.

Dylan, since I can't reply to your comments I have created a thread as you suggested here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8435831

> Making the statement a bit leaner, it could be interpreted as, "Without men doing it for them, women cant close the gap". Which is all kinds of incorrect.

Comments like the last line there are what I [despite being a male who genuinely feels there should be more women in tech] find extremely frustrating.

If we [men] do nothing we're accused of not caring and/or defending the status quo. If we try and help we get accused of suggesting women are incapable of doing it themselves.

> PS: Can someone explain the downvote?

I didn't downvote you, but since you made a PS, a PPS, and a PPPS about it I would suggest you read HN's Guidelines[1], specifically: "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

Some people are going to disagree with what you say - it's really not worth worrying about.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I didn't downvote you, but he gave this advice in response to a direct question. True, he could and maybe should have been asked what he was going to do about it, but since there's one CEO and lots of individual employees wishing for raises, some of whom are women, the likelihood is that individual employees who get a raise will do so at the behest of their direct manager, regardless of gender.

I want to make clear that I believe we all make mistakes and we all have prejudice - denying prejudice would be a foolish thing. I don't expect of him that he should be without prejudice, "he who is without sin" etc.

More I'm just re-iterating that what he said doesn't help in the battle for equality, it hinders. And within the setting he made the comment :-) it really doesn't help. Again not about blame, just that it doesn't help to put the emphasis on women to change their behaviour?

Certainly my focus is on the problem, not the person - because he may well be (and probably is) a much nicer person than me.

Check out http://heforshe.org/ ... launched recently enough I believe "A solidarity movement for gender equality"

I have and I think it's a bloomin' good idea. White people fought to end the injustice of black people, so surely it's also men's responsibility to fight for equality/respect for women.

That movement is organized by UN Women (United Nations). "UN Women is the UN organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. A global champion for women and girls, UN Women was established to accelerate progress on meeting their needs worldwide".

I'm still waiting for a big movement that supports person equality and empowerment of people. A global champion for people and persons.

Very well said. In general, I wish people would support each other more in tech. Too often people have a 'deal with it attitude'.

One possibility (as someone who did not downvote) that could lead well-meaning people to sincerely disagree with you:

Your framing of the problem of empowering professional women treats women as professional objects being acting upon by men, and not professional subjects of their own destiny. Many could see your proposal as perhaps self-defeating.

That's totally fair enough, but I don't believe that down-voting should be done on opinion - as it can bury a point of view. Very happy with people disagree-ing with me that's their prerogative of course! But down-voting someone is like flagging them. You should upvote something because you think it's a good comment. But never downvote unless the comment is abusive, flamebait etc. anyway IMHO :-)

> Let's just get it clear, it is all about what we (men) need to do.

There's wide disagreement about whether men should be getting involved in feminist projects. The concern is that men will dominate those as well.

The overwhelming majority of men wouldn't want to participate anyway, because they benefit from the way things are now.

To clarify: I'm saying it's our responsibility to change our behaviour. Inequality of any form is an imbalance of power, those who have been allocated or have taken greater power have I believe a moral imperative to re-balance the power as only they can return it without there being conflict.

For sure women can fight to take back their power, but it wouldn't be nicer for everyone if we (men) just gave it back?

I just don't think moral arguments are going to be persuasive. The fact is people like having power and they don't let go of it easily.

We British abolished slavery without a war, gave votes to people, then to common people then to women. Each one was indeed fought for by individuals but those in power chose to relinquish that power.

Please don't give up on us human's just yet. Sometimes we do good things, and occasionally great things!

PPPS: Thanks for those who voted back up. Would be nice to know the reasons for down votes still. Wouldn't it be quite easy to prompt a down voter for a reason and display that reason. Thus encouraging responsible downvoting?

And would you believe it, that comment was downvoted :-) oh the irony!

Comments about downvoting are [almost always nearly] content-free. The way to battle bad downvoting is just to upvote content that deserves to be promoted.

I kind of wish there were a link you could click on each post to see a list of the people who downvoted it.

I don't expect that to ever be added and I can imagine many ways in which it would backfire, but nothing annoys me more than silent downvotes (downvotes but no responses) to posts that are perfectly reasonable if maybe mildly controversial.

If you disagree with a post (that isn't just obviously a troll or otherwise clearly meant to be offensive) enough to downvote, respond with why, it is much more useful for everyone that way.

Okay, fine. I downvoted you because you seem to be blaming him for answering a direct question and also for saying it's women's problem when he said it was management's responsibility.

I can't tell for sure if you're actually blaming him or explaining yourself in a confusing way, but both of those are bad.

You make valid points, but the way you tied them into the conversation makes your point confusing and/or non-sequitur-insulting, so I think it's a bad comment.

Can you see from my point of view though. That while making a valid comment which didn't include flamebait or hate etc. I see my comment goes to zero and is greyed out. It's pretty disheartening and unwelcoming to have that done to you. I apologise to others about this 'meta'-conversation but I do think it matters - as it genuinely discourages me from sharing my thoughts and may do the same to otehrs.

I get somewhat annoyed when a comment of mine is downvoted but I think you're taking it too strongly. Sometimes people don't like valid comments. And especially since votes fluctuate, don't worry about an initial downvote.

And I don't really agree with "down-voting someone is like flagging them". I only flag the rare completely indefensible troll/spambot comments.

The downvotes are for your man-splaining. Your status as privileged group invalidates everything you say.

When I wrote the comment below the question was to the effect of "How is there privilege for men in Tech", it has since been edited.

> It's almost impossible to avoid it and I have certainly done my bit to make it worse when I was younger (and probably still do a little).

> However, I would rather a female commenter answer this from her direct experience.

/sarcasm

Was going to ask a serious question, then changed my mind.

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