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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

This is the second time on this thread you've suggested there might be "another side to the story". When the "other side" would belong to an anonymous abstraction, the suggestion that we dig for it is disingenuous: it comes across not as truth-seeking, but as a mendacious attempt to discredit the account.

The moral of this story wasn't "here is a person who is evil", or even "here is an event that doesn't do a good enough job to keep stuff like this from happening" (is the event even named?).

The moral of the story is "this stuff happens, and this is what it is like for people who experience it".

You may just have to live with the fact that there's no way to interrogate her account without sounding like a creep.

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You may just have to live with the fact that there's no way to interrogate her account without sounding like a creep.

Similarly, there's no way to question satanic cults without sounding like you don't care about the children being ritually molested. Or no way to criticize MADD without sounding like you support drunk driving. And there's no way to question accusations of witchcraft without sounding like a witch.

The blind acceptance of a moral panic is definitely scary. I'm pleasantly surprised to see you calling it out on this topic. getting

When the best example you can come up with of someone being railroaded by outrage is this guy:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rw50uko2nl5aoj2/Screenshot%202015-... --- which, seriously, is actually the last example you provided of someone getting railroaded by outrage ---

... I think it's fair to call shenanigans on the idea that we're in a "moral panic".

Of course, your comment wasn't germane to mine, either; it was an attempt to change the subject. The comment to which you responded doesn't even engage gender --- it doesn't even mention it. It's a smokescreen, which you're throwing up as another attempt to discredit the story.

You keep citing that quote of Dickinson without acknowledging the context:

"You look like a fucking pig in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of niggers, it will be your fault." - Mel Gibson, Director of "Passion of the Christ", shortly before Pax Dickinson's tweet

See also Justine Sacco, who mocked clueless attitudes and was assumed to be supporting them.

I stand by my example. All Pax Dickinson did was express views and mood affiliation that goes against the dominant narrative. You haven't even claimed he did anything else. Justine Sacco didn't even go against the dominant narrative, she was just misinterpreted as doing so.

Just so we're clear that your model of a person victimized by the attention being paid to sexual harassment and gender parity is Pax Dickinson.

I'm not sure your best rhetorical strategy here was "doubling down", by the way. And also: I don't think I've ever mentioned that quote before.

I'll repeat for a third time: I stand by my characterization of Dickinson as a person who hasn't even been accused of sexual harassment, harming gender parity or anything else at all besides disagreeing with our politically correct elites.

You are right that it wasn't you who mentioned that particular quote. We were thinking of the same discussion, though it was someone else who brought that one up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8169903

Both there and here, you seem to have this unwavering belief that Pax Dickinson has done something horribly wrong, yet you seem unwilling to state what that is. It's a bit confusing. I have absolutely no idea what argument you are trying to make.

I do not think Pax Dickinson did something "horribly wrong". I think he was fired for cause, and that firing was legitimate: as a public-facing officer of a relatively PR-dependent company, he exhibited gross incompetence. Being fired is not the end of the world.

Which is, of course, my point: your best example of someone railroaded by outrage is someone fired for incompetence. The point is that you don't have much evidence for there being any kind of moral panic, because there isn't much evidence of any kind of panic.

What about the UVA rape case? Fabricated story, targeted a fraternity, lots of extralegal unpleasantness. Throughout, the hounding of those young men was carried out by people serenely confident that they were acting to protect young women's sexual freedom.

Julian Sanchez has a nice write-up of a similar discussion:

http://www.juliansanchez.com/2015/01/27/chait-speech/

Chait if anything benefited from the hyperventilating response his piece on political correctness got. (I nodded along to most of that piece, by the way.)

As I said above, my displeasure seeing stories like this one centers around the comments. (which to be clear is not a problem with the story).

I agree the moral of this story wasn't "here is a person who is evil". The commenters calling for OP to name the investor don't seem to have grasped this.

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