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Comment by lsy | Hacker News Reader

I understand the author has strong feelings about her innate tactics for avoiding misery, but the ultimate thrust of her "amelioration patterns" are variants on "toughen up" or "don't feed the trolls", both of which assign responsibility for the problem to victims of misogyny, not perpetrators.

The author got lucky and doesn't, or can't, feel bad about misogyny. This isn't true for everyone, nor should it be. I agree with the "feminists" that it's counterproductive to say that if more women were like you, misogyny wouldn't matter so much. Talking about "good" experiences as models is only productive when the difference between your experience and others' is the behavior of potential perpetrators, not the behavior of potential victims.

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The thrust of the article seemed to me to be that the author feels her experiences are being erased by prominent views on women in tech - that folks like Kane are labelling her experiences as invalid.

I agree that's how she feels. What I'm trying to say is that the problem isn't with her experiences, which are totally valid, but the extrapolation of those experiences into suggestions that place responsibility with victims rather than perpetrators.

The issue is that she feels that people get mad at her for being pretty happy about how things are for her. That has very little to do with victims and all that.

It's really weird when you're not allowed to feel what you feel just because people who share some trait with you have different experiences.

That's not what's happening here.

A whole class of people is facing an uphill battle in tech. This is undisputable, and we know that there IS real misogyny, etc. This lady comes along and says, "That's not my experience", which gets instrumentalized by everyone else (viz. this thread) to dismiss the problem.

It's fine to have her experience, but she should realize that by being vocal about it in the way she is, she's actively undermining the struggle of other women who DO face an uphill battle convincing people their struggle is real.

Exactly, given how atypical the author's experience and outlook is, her advice doesn't translate well to others, and unfortunately, she fails to realize this.

I have to admit, I never imagined the mindblindness of ASD could ever result in a misguided empathy article.

No she does realize that and goes over it in the article. She's trying to ask you to respect her opinion regardless. Which obviously went over the heads of many here. Even though all she is essentially saying is "listen to me", you refuse to listen and try to invalidate her opinion. Because "her advice doesn't translate well to others". The only advice she gave was to acknowledge her experiences and perhaps digest them.

I appreciate that she's asking to be heard and acknowledged. But she does suggest she has important advice to offer when she says "why won’t you let me give you what I have?", and my take is that her advice is only narrowly applicable to women like her.

I think her offering her "advice" counterproductive, because not only does it not apply to most women in tech, who do not have the requisite ASD traits, it also makes it seem as if other women in tech who want to be accepted as theirselves are somehow mistaken in not taking her path. Worse, articles like this provide ammo to men who have zero desire to change, since they can now complain, "This woman's happy, why can't you be like her?"

The irony is that both groups of women want to be accepted as themselves, but Meredith is unaware how she already fits in to male tech culture, and how that partially eases her path. Also, given her ASD-ness, she's probably missed out on much subtle discrimination; it's easy to ignore discrimination you don't notice.

Using perpetrator and victims in this context dilutes and devalues the meaning of those words.

Also misogyny is not an act, so it cannot be perpetrated.

My experience with women in tech is that they are smart, strong, foul mouthed, sarcastic, heavy drinkers and awesome dirty joke storytellers. They are the creme de la creme.

> My experience with women in tech is that they are smart, strong, foul mouthed, sarcastic, heavy drinkers and awesome dirty joke storytellers.

In other words, they're "one of the guys."

Which kind of summarizes the whole problem -- women who want careers in tech who aren't naturally "one of the guys" either have to learn to pretend that they are, denying their entire personality in order to fit in, or find another line of work.

Or there are a lot more women that can be "one of the guys" but their upbringing and the culture imposed onto them fucks them up?

> fucks them up?

How is not being "one of the guys" a result of having been fucked up?

Why not turn that around?

"Or there are a lot more men that can be "accepting of women's perspectives" but their upbringing and the culture imposed on them fucks them up?"

E.g., beliefs in being the sole breadwinner, beliefs that women are less suited for STEM work, that men are (or should be) superior to women, my workplace should be like my frat house, etc.

It's great for women that can be one of the guys (e.g., Meredith), but why is that a requirement to work in software?

Unless my browser's find feature is broken, this is the first time the term "one of the guys" has been introduced to this discussion.

Wouldn't a fairer summary of the whole problem include anyone of any gender who isn't naturally "one of the guys"?

That depends on who you think the perpetrators and victims are. The particular troll mentioned in the article has a wide variety of victims of both genders and all political views.

That's a tricky distinction between empower a victim and blaming a victim. If I teach you to call the police if someone breaks into your house, that's not the say as blaming you for someone breaking into your house. She is talking about strategies that she's learned that disarm aggressors, which is not victim blaming.

But calling the police is placing responsibility with the perpetrators, right? Sort of like going to a manager or project maintainer to report harassment. To me, this is closer to "try not to care so much about people breaking in; I don't, and it really works for me".

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