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Comment by celticninja | Hacker News Reader

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.

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

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.

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