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Comment by christoph | Hacker News Reader

Seriously, i'm kind of surprised at the article and the comments. It all seems so intrinsically obvious to me.

Ever met a seriously hot girl, who then opens her mouth and suddenly you lose interest? Who wants to listen to a girl witter on about herself and her problems within the first two minutes of meeting?

Then you meet a girl, who's not quite so attractive but suddenly sparks creativity in you, inspires you, makes you laugh, makes you feel young again...

Obviously there is more to attraction than "looks".

This isn't a sexist comment. It goes both ways, and it is gender/race/age/religion unrelated.

The fact it even needs to be debated is scary and highlights how deeply most people have got hung up on physical beauty while ignoring the fundamental things that actually matter.

Looks fade, personality, generally does not.

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For what it's worth, I'm sure you didn't mean this to be sexist, since the phenomenon does exist in both directions. But your comment nonetheless reads unpleasantly, because the question "ever met a seriously hot girl?" assumes that the reader is a (straight) male, or, conceivably, a lesbian. That's the sort of wording that makes women feel unwelcome in communities like HN; it's essentially equivalent to having a discussion with a male and female colleague in which you address all of your comments to the man and ignore the woman. In general, you'll likely get a better response, and be able to avoid the "not sexist" disclaimers, if you write as if you were speaking to a mixed-gender audience (which you are!). In this case that could be as simple as s/girl/person/.

>But your comment nonetheless reads unpleasantly, because the question "ever met a seriously hot girl?" assumes that the reader is a (straight) male, or, conceivably, a lesbian.

Yeah, and so? He perhaps wanted to address this part of HN, which is the most populous anyway.

And this comment is at the heart of the issue. It would have taken minimal extra effort with negligible effect on the intent of the OP to simply say: Have you ever met someone seriously hot? I mean, so seriously hot? Then they open their mouths and go to hell... etc.

Your comment, to whit address this part of HN, IS the problem. The OP could have addressed everyone - but failed to even bother wanting to try.

Take the extra effort to include all of us, regardless of our genes. Be kind - we'll think all the more of you.

Unfortunately HN seems to take anything related to this topic to some type of all inclusive white-knight extreme, which causes more problems than the people who make an issue out of it try and solve.

The grandparent comment is that persons personal experience or perspective. Nothing offensive about that, or any need to iterate through every possible gender pairing needed to try and give everyone a warm fuzzy.

The comment is only offensive if you are trying to make it into something more than what it actually is when taken at face value.

I think that this "white knight" (as the other commenter put it) "here to help women" kind of corrective action, actually belittles them.

I mean, women are perfectly capable to understand that the one who wrote the above happened to be a straight male and so talked from HIS viewpoint.

They can also adapt what he said for their circumstances, as can gay men etc, and e.g respond with "yeah, I know what you're talking about, had that happen with a great looking guy that turned out to be totally vacuous", etc.

Speaking like genderless objects addressing other genderless objects with genderless pronouns and genderless generalizations doesn't really help anyone.

> Speaking like genderless objects addressing other genderless objects with genderless pronouns and genderless generalizations doesn't really help anyone.

If you're speaking in the first person, about your own experiences, it's totally cool to go wild with gender. Also if you're speaking to a person of a particular gender, or in the third person about people of a particular gender: great! No one's saying all speech should be genderless (well, I'm sure someone somewhere is, but that's nowhere near the position of anyone in this thread.)

The only issue is that if you're speaking in the second person, to a crowd of people that is in fact mixed-gender, but you speak as if they were all male, then this can have the effect of making women feel (very slightly) unwelcome. Yes, women are more than capable of performing the mental transformation into what you would have said if you were actually addressing them. But the experience of doing this is a constant, subtle reminder that they don't belong.

> I mean, women are perfectly capable to understand that the one who wrote the above happened to be a straight male and so talked from HIS viewpoint.

I second this. I think this exaggerated gender neutrality bullshit is more sexist than using genders. It all goes under the assumption that someone somewhere with skewed perception will get offended and call you out for being sexist (or, as is the case here, someone will tell you off how your lack of gender neutrality was potentially careless and might cause someone offence), when in fact, only a few loud dim-witted balloon-heads will get offended if someone used "he" or "she" in their writing.

Furthermore, I doubt anyone would've given two fucks. Alas, I'm sure someone will get offended by me saying this and comment to this how I'm wrong, even though they probably wouldn't, they just think they would have (but that's another issue).

Anyway, to conclude: I don't believe there's anything sexist about using "he" or "she" (or whatever other form of gender) in communication the way the author (christoph) used it. In my opinion, sexism is about bigotry, or misbelief that one gender is superior to others.

But why address only "this part of HN"? As the OP said, the phenomenon applies to both men and women. So choosing to address only men is being gratuitously exclusive.

Huh. I was about to weigh in on how the original comment wasn't sexist, but here you go and prove me wrong. Oh well.

Sexist besides "macho" and "looking down on women" etc also means "pertaining to a specific sex".

The comment of the parent was that second thing, if anything.

He talked from his experience, and that was the one he described. Nothing sexist in the bad sense about it, and no need to de-sexify it to some genderless form to make it "understood" by others. Women, gays, lesbians, etc are perfectly capable of understanding what he said, and applying it to their circumstances.

Personally, I like to think that people can relate to a story/experience without the need to make it gender neutral. As someone that has to overcome a social debility, I can't even contemplate the height of arrogance of telling others to jump through hoops for my sake. Politeness and respect is all I ask. Barring that, I simply do not interact with them.

If you're relating a personal experience, "I once met a seriously hot girl...", sure. That's not quite what the OP said, though.

Again, imagine you're speaking in person with a (straight) woman. You might tell a story about when you met a hot girl (assuming this is a personal conversation where that sort of story would be appropriate). But would you ever ask your friend if she had ever met a hot girl but then lost interest? It just doesn't make sense as a question in this context.

imagine that, as human beings, the people reading these comments can make the adjustments in their own heads, saving the need for tortuous linguistic circumlocutions.

I speak with mixed-gender groups of people all the time, and don't find it particularly tortuous.

For me, reading this kinda felt like a reminder that I was in a space that's mostly men - a reminder that I'm a minority here, but not that bothersome. I can imagine it being more bothersome to other women, and the general pattern does make me feel a bit more like an outsider (when lots of these comments happen). Just one data point.

And for me, a reminder that most men are straight.

assumes that the reader is a (straight) male

Or it implies the writer is a straight male discussing his own experience, but who is incorrectly using the second person. That's the most natural reading.

I've observed that in my first drafts, I often (confusingly) switch between the first person, second person, and the mathematician's "we" ("we now integrate by parts to..."). I've also observed women will also sometimes use "you" when they mean "I", and I occasionally tease them by saying "I too think that dress will make my ass look great" (their reaction: [light punch] "you know what I mean you jerk").

Being consistent and correct takes effort that is incommensurate with the value of an HN comment.

It's a bit silly that we've now declared certain grammatical errors, tones and voices to be secretly sexist.

No one's claiming to have discovered secret sexism hidden deep in the OP's soul. Whatever the intent, the effect of these words is to assume a male audience and make women feel unwelcome. Maybe this effect seems like a secret because most guys are used to being the default audience. As a non-straight male, I can promise you it's jarring to read a comment and realize "this wasn't written for me". (it's not threatening or offensive, at least to me; I'm used to being in the minority and pretty secure about belonging in the tech world. But it's still very noticeable in a way that I think a lot of guys don't realize.)

Anyway, we certainly have no right to expect total tense consistency in forum posts, though HN has historically had a higher writing-quality standard than most. But the second person in particular has the effect of assuming that the reader can empathize with a particular experience, and it's worth realizing that this can be off-putting when that experience excludes a sizeable fraction of your audience. It's not a criminal mistake. But it's worth avoiding, and easy to avoid as long as your mental picture of HN readership includes a few women.

I'm a minority myself, at least in my current location. People have different experiences, and sometimes they describe an experience you can't relate to. If your experiences are uncommon, this will happen to you a lot more. Sorry, just how probability works.

Feeling unwelcome is a choice on the part of the listener. Sometimes my friends discuss their parents attempting to arrange a marriage for them, assorted ceremonies, ragging, dowries, and similar things which I've never experienced. I can treat this as an opportunity to feel unwelcome, or I can treat it as an unfamiliar part of my friend's life that he chooses to share with me. I choose to do the latter even when they make grammar mistakes.

And quite honestly, I think it would be a bit arrogant of me to demand that everyone in India change their behavior just to avoid reminders that I'm a minority. I guess the new maxim is "When in Rome, demand that Romans act like American tourists so we don't feel unwelcome."

Have you ever met a seriously ugly girl with an incredible personality? I have, and it sucks. No fire, no passion, no sexual desire. She might as well be a dude. Physical attraction is important for a romantic relationship.

Yeah you're right. It goes both ways. But to be frank, the parent commenter wasn't even close to suggesting attractiveness isn't important. I have no idea where you're coming from.

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