“Let her speak please” • Hacker News Board

Re: “Let her speak please”

#691

Post by mpweiher » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 5:12 PM UTC

Mz wrote: post #690

mpweiher wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> women are more expected to just take it. Or women, in general, just don't want the bother. > giving the guys push back Excellent. Too many women don't, in my experience. In my personal experience, I find women not standing up for themselves in the situation at hand, and then complaining about it for ages after. > highly likely to get me banned, no matter how reasonable I am about it. That seems unlikely. If you are…

Or women, in general, just don't want the bother. Yeah, that must be why blacks got lynched in the Deep South. They just couldn't be bothered to stand up for themselves when the KKK came for them. /s

"Nicht alles was hinkt ist auch ein Vergleich"

This comparison is ridiculous beyond the pale. Show me evidence of women getting lynched for speaking up.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#692

Post by mpweiher » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 5:13 PM UTC

qb45 wrote: post #685

mpweiher wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you even understand that sentence? Let me clear it up. The "not standing up for themselves" is in the actual situation , against the actual person they need to stand up against . The "complaining afterward" is after the situation has passed, and complaining to a completely different person not involved in the original interaction. That is the exact opposite of "standing up for yourself", and it is also not "pushi…

They don't stand up for themselves because they are often outnumbered and/or outmuscled and habitually don't believe that we have their back, for various reasons.

You understand the meaning of "for yourself", right?

It exactly means standing up, well, for yourself, and not relying on or waiting for others.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#693

Post by Mz » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 5:23 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #691

Mz wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or women, in general, just don't want the bother. Yeah, that must be why blacks got lynched in the Deep South. They just couldn't be bothered to stand up for themselves when the KKK came for them. /s

"Nicht alles was hinkt ist auch ein Vergleich" This comparison is ridiculous beyond the pale. Show me evidence of women getting lynched for speaking up.

No, it isn't ridiculous. It is exaggerated and that is intentional. The intent is to make it clear that when the social environment is sufficiently hostile, it is ridiculous to act like it is the victim's fault for being victimized.

I already said above that I was rate limited. I believe this was essentially because when I first joined, I would get dog piled simply for being a woman opening her mouth here. You ignore that and accuse me of misbehaving as the reason I was concerned that I might wind up banned, no matter how hard I tried to behave. Thankfully, I no longer worry about that like I once did.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#694

Post by watwut » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 7:27 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #692

qb45 wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't stand up for themselves because they are often outnumbered and/or outmuscled and habitually don't believe that we have their back, for various reasons.

You understand the meaning of "for yourself", right? It exactly means standing up, well, for yourself, and not relying on or waiting for others.

If you stand up and get punished and ostracised/mocked as a result then standing up did you no good. You will learn not to do it.

Stand up thing worked great in this story. I trust you that your relative could suceed in standing up instead of being treated as crazy bad women. A lot of it is residuum from old times when gender roles were different and some of both genders keep going old way.

Her existence does not excuse dudes who attempt to dominate women more them men. I did won those fights in the past, but the older I am the less I care about whether it was intentional or subconscious. It affects me all the same.

That is why stories like this are good to hear about - it is good role model for women lime your relative - to see that she can stop the dude, not to consider his interest and win.

Maybe you could show her the story to make her inspired for that.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#695

Post by oh_sigh » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 7:33 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #659

oh_sigh wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any way to disagree with the assertion that you're trolling without being accused of metatrolling? That's rhetorical, I'll see myself out.

That's the obvious retort, but if you think about it, it's easy. Simply don't do things that imply bad faith (rhetorical questions, irrelevant distraction, drive-by swipes, grandiose posturing—all of which you managed to cram in there) and instead do some things that imply good faith, like taking responsibility and finding common ground.

Rhetorical questions have been used by rhetoricians for thousands of years without bad faith. Whether something was sexist or not when reading an article about a supposed sexist event seems highly relevant, especially when the supposed victims has gone on record saying she didn't think it was sexism.

Am I getting special attention because there is a received wisdom around sexism in segments of the tech community which I'm not acknowledging? I'm not sure how other communities operate, but I've noticed that, basically, if anything negative happens to a woman or minority in the tech community, it is automatically assumed that it was because they are a woman or minority. This situation is a perfect example.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#696

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 7:58 PM UTC

cooper12 wrote: post #689

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a tech forum, in part, as you suggest. So surely avoiding issues which are primarily social and don't have a specific bearing on tech is reasonable. The other fora I see as better would be one's concerned with sex discrimination, probably IRL places. If someone posts on HN about a library someone wrote, a hack they did, obscure details of a back-end, a new startup .. the sex of the people involved is very rar…

Just because it's a tech forum, doesn't mean it's immune from social issues. This fetishization of "objectivity" (like there's such a thing) is one of the reasons tech has such a problem with it. I wish we could all be emotionless robots who only process facts and figures, but reality doesn't work that way and we all have our implicit or explicit biases and the world is not a just place. Also by your logic things lik…

>As for your retort, the best forum to address issues is right where they happen. //

I find it more like suggesting all cookery books have a section on the authors opinions of racial segregation. Sure, racism appears in kitchens everywhere, but IMO you don't need to address it in recipe books. Indeed I'd rather recipe books keep to recipes, not because I want to ignore racism but because they're not a useful forum for it.

Net neutrality and UBI, the latter probably doesn't belong here but they are both things that hackers are involved in hacking, whilst speculating about whether a particular individual is or isn't acting out of sexism seems very far from the primary aims of this forum.

Why not keep this a place where we, of whatever sex or none, can "jerk off to the latest Go rewrite", why do you need to bring sexual politics here? If people are talking about tech, the tech has no sexual connotations, the people are removed by virtue of the forum from their obvious sexual characteristics, ... why not allow a place to be non-sexual, tech (and startup), focused?

If the woman who headed the Go rewrite is a bisexual feminist who married her hamster then you can no doubt comment about that on tabloid news fora; why do you have to bring it here too?

Presumably - given your vaguely couched suggestions of people exhibiting racism and sexism - unless my cornflake packet talks about these issues you find it to be racist & sexist?

Re: “Let her speak please”

#697

Post by AmIFirstToThink » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 8:51 PM UTC

ajuckel wrote: post #577

AmIFirstToThink wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the perspective of the person on the stage should somehow color what we all learn from the Facebook post. What if you knew she was guiding his PhD thesis? That he was her student. What if he had conversations with her before this topic trying to understand her theory? What the person on the stage was feeling does matter. Ms. Talkington is entitled to her interpretation of the event. But, to say that interpretation i…

I don't see how your hypothetical, behind-the-scenes interactions would have affected how observers experienced the event. Again, I feel the point of the facebook post was an observer sharing her perspective, not someone claiming to be reporting on some objective, unassailable truth. I apologize, I wasn't trying to imply that you have less right to speak than anyone else, though I see now how I worded it clumsily. My…

>I am suggesting that seeking to fully understand OP's position, starting from the assumption that OP is a rational individual giving a true and faithful account of her reasonable reaction to a sequence of events would be a worthwhile endeavor.

I read the article on Facebook. I read the commentary by the lady scientist on stage.

I took them at their word about the reaction that they were having.

A reaction of one participant is not the whole story.

My comments were an exercise in probabilities where the outwards symptoms would have been same as seen by the participants of the events.

Hence I said there is a chance that the moderator was not being sexist.

BTW, in what other situations would you grant someone making the claim to be true and faithful recount of events without any further inquiry; especially when you are labeling a living human being as "sexist" for rest of his life, with all the consequences of that in 21st century this day and age.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#698

Post by monksy » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 10:36 PM UTC

vog wrote: post #660

monksy wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was aggressive. The statement was a command (followed by a desperate request) deriding the behavior and speech of the moderator. Why do you feel that calling the person who interjected a "heckler" is a bad thing?

First, "heckler" has negative connotation, while the interruption itself was helpful and to the point. Second, attaching such an attribute at all to that person was inappropriate, given she pointed out an obvious misbehaviour of the moderator. An appropriate reaction would have been: "Oh, I didn't notice. Thanks for pointing this out!"

The emotional attachment was added by the listener/reader of the word.

> Second, attaching such an attribute at all to that person was inappropriate, given she pointed out an obvious misbehaviour of the moderator.

That is an assumption based on your emotional connection to the word. No one believes that the moderator's behavior was "bad" (different attributions have been made)

> An appropriate reaction would have been: "Oh, I didn't notice. Thanks for pointing this out!"

I would strongly disagree with that. It's impressive that he recognized the heckle, and didn't respond negatively. From what I saw he acknowledged the event and made the correction. For someone to do that on stage is VERY impressive. That takes a lot of experience and a lot of skill. (Many performers respond very negative to a heckle).

The heckle broke the 4th wall, it was processed by the moderator, acknowledged (mentally and then verbally) without anger (which requires processing and understanding), the suggestion (I'm being generous in that) was taken, and the moderator returned back to the 4th wall with the context prior.

That's a freaking amazing job.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#699

Post by UncleMeat » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 11:07 PM UTC

alttab wrote: post #556

croon wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you watch the rest of the video you will find the moderator imposes himself and cuts off the panellists and talks over them multiple times, seemingly regardless of gender. Honest question: Did you watch the rest of the video? I did and completely disagree with your assessment.

If you both watched it, we could simply count the number of interruptions and see if she was interrupted statistically significantly more. There's an objective answer and opinions don't really count here.

"Statistically significantly" is not a magic word. It has no application when you sample the entire population (in this case, the entire video).

Re: “Let her speak please”

#700

Post by mpweiher » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 8:10 AM UTC

watwut wrote: post #694

mpweiher wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You understand the meaning of "for yourself", right? It exactly means standing up, well, for yourself, and not relying on or waiting for others.

If you stand up and get punished and ostracised/mocked as a result then standing up did you no good. You will learn not to do it. Stand up thing worked great in this story. I trust you that your relative could suceed in standing up instead of being treated as crazy bad women. A lot of it is residuum from old times when gender roles were different and some of both genders keep going old way. Her existence does not exc…

You don't appear to understand the concept of "standing up for yourself".

It fundamentally includes "in the face of adversity". And that means that you do it well knowing that there can and likely will be negative consequences. If you only do it under a guarantee of no repercussions, then you're not standing up...for anything, really.