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Comment by moomin | Hacker News Reader

Let's be clear here, Jon Ronson spent a fair bit of time lying to Adria Richards to put together his book, his portrayal of the timeline is inaccurate and even if this wasn't the case it'd be a phenomenal amount of false equivalence:

http://www.shakesville.com/2015/02/the-falsest-of-false-equi...

TL;DR; Yeah he got fired, but he didn't get fired because of an internet backlash.

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can you provide any supporting facts that Jon Ronson lied? I mean you say he lied about hsi reasons for interviewing her, i.e. said it was about sexism. However he has not lied about what she said or what actually happened. You do not deny that he has quoted her faithfully.

To me it seems that she was expecting that her minority status would protect her, she goes to lengths to point out she is black, female and jewish. who cares? And then the article has a huge backstory on why her life was so tough. you know what so were many peoples, the only reason to make an issue of how hard you had it as a kid is to try and engineer some sympathy. either what she did was right or it was wrong but her upbringing has nothing to do with that.

In my opinion, her upbringing and life have everything to do with this. If it were not for how she was brought up and how she was treated during her life, she may or may not have done what she did. The only reason is not to try to engineer some sympathy, but there are other possible reasons as well.

If her backstory was a backstory full of mental illness, would you respond differently to what had happened?

Now, I'm not trying to say that racism or stereotypes are good, because they aren't. However, people's past are what shape people and can help others understand people's viewpoints.

Even because of her backstory, however, I find that pretty much everybody (except the reporter, who didn't participate too much) overreacted. In general, though, I find that many of Adria's thought processes were flawed, but that's not relevant to this reply (at least, I don't think so).

but if her background applies then surely so does his, did he struggle in his upbringing? is there anything in his early life that made him into the person he is today? sure there are but we dont get that side because the sympathy that the writer is trying to evoke is with one side. If they made both sides appear human then they cant have an evil doer and a clear cut good guy.

And i agree our past shapes us, shaped both people in this debate, but we only hear her side because that is who the writer wants you to sympathise with. Hank is just a namelss white male with no life before this incident.

True, however, in defense of the writer perhaps the writer was trying to balance out the story, because throughout most of the story above her backstory was pretty much "it's her fault". To balance it out a bit, in the middle the writer inserted a "hey, maybe she did really have a reason for her reaction" before returning to "nope, not really-ish".

At least, that's how I felt when I read the article.

But you do make a valid point, his background isn't really brought forth, although slightly it is but not much at all. However, I feel that saying something along the lines of "Hank grew up in Sometown, Somestate, Someplace, and had a loving mother and father, etc etc etc..." would feel out of place in such an article... I'm only guessing Hank's backstory and do not claim to actually know it.

tl;dr & in conclusion: Perhaps it's the writer trying to balance things out? :/

To be honest his stories are about sexism, but not in the way some activists like to frame it, but still.

I agree, it's all about her minority status and backstory, I'd argue that because of that she wasn't able to handle the matter in a smarter way. It was dangerous to make a public example out of this guy and escalate things, which thanks to the internet is way easier than ever. If she'd felt stronger, had more middle class problem solving skills, she might have taken a smarter approach, one where she didn't expose herself to attacks.

There is one thing I learned, just because someone is poor, had it hard, doesn't mean she's right or a nice person and is equipped to handle situations appropriately.

You're asking for supporting evidence for something I didn't say? Wow, exactly how weak do you think your case is?

Except nothing in that page gives any facts about why he was fired. The author claims:

> A man was fired for violating the conduct rules in a professional space.

Which is naked supposition on her part.

This article is the worst kind of inflammatory journalism. I would never attempt to deny that there is a systemic patriarchy in place, or that white privilege exists, but tying every perceived injustice in the world to these braoder issues undermines the real issues that affect millions of people on a daily basis. As has been pointed out here by many other commentors, the behaviour of Hank and his friend was clearly outside conference guidelines and their being reprimanded for it is absolutely correct. Attempting to tie that to some sense of white (no race element to this story at all), male enitlement is absurd and frankly does a disservice to both the civil rights and feminist movements. When humour is made at the expense of a person in a position of relative weakness it is wrong. When she overheard someone else's (admittedly unfunny but by no means directly offensive to any race/gender/sexual orientation)joke and took offense then that was her personal reaction. Making her displeasure known to conference organisers was absolutely within her remit but turning herself into some sort of 'crusader' for a vague idea of 'rights and justice' in a public forum is problematic for me. Your article has done exactly that, by 'casually' mentioning the use of smart phones in the Ferguson case you are obviously attempting to equate what was, let's be honest, a minor case of a clash of senses of humour to the killing of a young man by the police. That is despicable. You then go on to mention the race of Lindsey Stone, despite the fact that it has no relevance to the case which she became known for. This sort of linking of every case of offensive public behaviour with what are real, and long running, issues of race and gender equality serve only to perpetuate a mentality of 'us and them' and undermine real cases of racism and sexism that still occur around the world on a regular basis.

> I would never attempt to deny that there is a systemic patriarchy in place

I would.

There are a couple of counter-arguments. One, claiming that there is a "patriarchy" sounds a whole lot like a conspiracy theory. Replace "patriarchy" with "zionism" in typical statements to see what I mean. This makes me very wary of any hand-waving claims of "patriarchy".

The second is this:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15491274

Women have in-group preference. Men don't. The assumption that there's a "patriarchal" preference by white men for other white men is projection. What do I mean by this?

Most people believe that other people think like them. "I'm a reasonable person. So if I did X, it would be for reason Y. Therefore if other people are doing X, it's for reason Y."

i.e. Rich white men prefer to support other rich white men.

That just isn't true. There is no evidence for "in-group" preference of men. There is plenty of evidence that no such preference exists.

There is evidence for preference of power. If you can make Bill Gates money, he'll help you so long as it's in his favor. The second you can't help him, he'll cut your throat (metaphorically speaking), and leave you for dead.

The men who have such behavior tend to get ahead of people who aren't that ruthless. This isn't "in-group men" preference. It's cut-throat back-stabbing competition.

> Making her displeasure known to conference organisers was absolutely within her remit but turning herself into some sort of 'crusader' for a vague idea of 'rights and justice' in a public forum is problematic for me.

I agree. That's the crux of the matter. I suspect if she had only complained to the conference organizers, none of the rest would have happened. But she was clearly operating outside of the bounds of the conference herself.

And from the other links posted here, that wasn't the first time she did something like this.

> claiming that there is a "patriarchy" sounds a whole lot like a conspiracy theory. Replace "patriarchy" with "zionism" in typical statements to see what I mean.

That's a false analogy. Zionism and similar conspiracy theories are predicated upon the notion that there organizations and people consciously manipulating things behind the scenes.

When most people discuss the patriarchy, they're not referring to conscious, willful agents. They're talking about systemic sexism.

> When most people discuss the patriarchy, they're not referring to conscious, willful agents. They're talking about systemic sexism.

In my experience, that's the minority view.

I've had a number of people tell me out-right that they're "opposed to the patriarchy, which is a system where grey-haired white men rule the world".

Great. Are they "opposed to zionism, which is a system where jews rule the world"?

They label the second statement as bat-shit insane. So do I.

They label the first statement as reasonable and above board. I don't.

I will agree with you that if that's the position they're taking then it's pretty far from reasonable.

I hear what you are saying and I agree that the term patriarchy is a very loaded one. However what I am referring to is, as other commenters have pointed out, a systemic patriarchy. I am by no means implying some sort of conscious system of oppression but rather a centuries-old systemic dominance of men over women that has undeniably resulted in women feeling that they exist in a position of relative social weakness to men. I share your suspicion when people mention systems of 'control' while implying some sort of conspiracy. My use of the term patriarchy is closer connected to Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony, within a gender framework http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony. Granted this is changing but it is by no means over. I merely stated my position on women's rights and the patriarchy as a way to pre-empt any unfounded backlash to my comments along the lines that I somehow support the patriarchy. As you have pointed out the main point of my article was that her actions were justified to a point, and that the actions that went beyond that point were the catalyst for the unfortunate repercussions that ensued for both parties. Thank you though for highlighting this as it is an important distinction to be made.

This is why the incident and all reports of it is so hard to navigate, there don't seem to be enough facts - just the differing perspectives of three people, which we have to judge on the merits of their plausibility.

In the linked article, I got curious about this paragraph:

"Everything was seemingly resolved, and there was no public reaction on Twitter. It was only once the man "posted about losing his job on Hacker News" that the pushback started, and then escalated exponentially, with even ostensible allies abetting the abuse by tone and choice policing."

If I recall, and I might well be wrong, the discussion was already underway when that guy posted. I'm also having trouble with identifying anything in the content of his post that would put him at fault for what happened afterwards (which was deplorable).

Can anyone with a better recollection than me weigh in on this? The article doesn't sound particularly unbiased, and neither does it have to be, but are the facts right here or not?

You are probably referring to this paragraph:

> I did not get the guy fired; his own behaviour, which his employer considered another strike on his already written-up employee file, caused his employer to make the decision to fire him.

I'd like to quote Wikipedia when I say "citation needed". Even though it's an interesting post and raises good questions, I don't think it backs your TL;DR.

That's anything but clear. Could you clarify what lies Ronson told and also point out the inaccuracies in the timeline.

There's plenty of inaccuracies in your link, for example: I'm not sure how forking a guys repo is sexist, that seems to be (an understandable) context based misunderstanding rather than a fact.

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