Comment by ezy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ezy | Hacker News Reader

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Ok, I think I see where we depart. To me, treating women as sex objects in the workplace is absolutely part of sexism, and that's probably her assumption too. I see how you might make a distinction, but I don't agree with it.

The idea that the harassment wouldn't happen if she were old and ugly doesn't make it not about sexism -- anymore than a guy who only patronizes a certain kind of woman (the kind he is attracted to) is not sexist because he doesn't patronize all women equally.

There is a sense which (I think) you're going for where this could be thought of as people latching onto things that are "out of the norm", rather than specifically sexism -- but that seems tautological to me. All -isms (that I can think of) are based on pre-judging based on things that are non-normative: sex, race, age, orientation -- you name it.

What is the norm that she's violating? Well, it seems (to me) to be existing as a (technical) woman in the workplace and all of the attributes that come along with that -- like a human that speaks in a higher register, or wears dresses or doesn't wear t-shirts as regularly.

This is, again, not uncommon and therefore the most likely explanation for all of the things she's encountered taken in totality. "Culture fit", which you refer to, is about prejudice -- and each time the type of prejudice may differ (between racism, sexism, & agism, let's say[1]) but it's still prejudice, not some magical other thing.

[1] suit-ism, let's not forget suit-ism. :-)[2]

[2] Sharp dressed -ism?

I wholeheartedly agree that she faced a lot of prejudice. But not all prejudice is sexism, just ask any other kind of minority! There are minority men who are on the receiving end of prejudice who will tell you that there's a lot more to it than just sexism.

> The idea that the harassment wouldn't happen if she were old and ugly doesn't make it not about sexism

Yes, yes it does.

From the dictionary:

sexism: prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

synonyms: sexual discrimination, chauvinism, gender prejudice, gender bias "your hiring practices have generated numerous complaints about sexism"

According to that definition a man who likes women and hits on some of them isn't sexist, unless he also happens to think that men are better than women.

My point is simply that sexism isn't defined as "all things that happen to a woman that she doesn't like" or else literally everything bad that happens to a woman is sexism and I think it's obvious that her alarm failing to go off isn't sexism or getting in a car accident isn't sexism.

It sounds to me like she experienced sexism, sexual harassment, ageism, dress-ism (is that the right word?) and voice-ism (???) and they're all bad. But they're not all sexism.

Oh well, we will not agree.

Again, I will say, especially to your concluding remark, this is a distinction without a difference. Because (eg.) if someone is prejudicial against a human with breasts, that does not make them simply "breast-ist" because to boil down to that level is ridiculous and entirely context-free. SImilar to everything youw rote, because all of this is occurring in a particular context.

The distinction absolutely does matter! It wouldn't matter if ONLY WOMEN dressed differently than stereotypical techies, or ONLY WOMEN had higher-than-average pitch voices, and ONLY WOMEN were young. But they're not! Both women and men might display those attributes. In order to treat people fairly, you have to treat people fairly. It wouldn't be a triumph of justice to reset men's prejudices towards women but not also towards other men.

In other words, discriminating against someone for a particular characteristic like the ones she mentioned is terrible and it shouldn't happen, regardless of the sex of the person being discriminated against.

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