How to Apologize • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Apologize

#61

Post by deanproxy » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 1:30 PM UTC

hythloday wrote: post #38

deanproxy wrote: post #29

> Women: Need another beer? Let one of our friendly (female) event staff get that for you. I must have missed this entire story, but is this really a line that people are upset over? Can someone explain why? Maybe I'm not reading into it enough or there is some missing context? To me it seems like they're just saying another female will get them a beer if they want one. How is that offensive?

Yeah, that quote is out-of-context to the point of disingenuousness. Women are listed as one of the "great perks" that (male?) attendees can enjoy: https://img.skitch.com/20120320-fmsc5mciy8e7n3nxhakmegxxg9.p...

Ah, Thank you! That definitely brings a lot more context into it and I can see how some may get offended by it.

I still question whether this is offensive to myself. Compared to the ads I hear on the radio and TV for local clubs and bars and how they're touting their female attendance or "hot bar tenders" as a reason to come, this seems relatively tame to that...

Re: How to Apologize

#62

Post by carlcoryell » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 1:32 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #13

orblivion wrote: post #10

I'm a bit torn on this whole issue, I wonder if somebody could give me some perspective. There are two conflicting things I don't like here. In the first place, I don't like when people are so sensitive that there's no room for a harmless joke. In most cases I really would say "oh come on lighten up." On the other hand, among us computer programmers, there's so much social ineptness (and perhaps outright disrespect f…

I can't and won't defend these guys, but I remember my teenage years, and I remember being pretty shallow when it came to women. Looking around, I suspect many other males were the same way. I got over this by slowly growing up, not by having a crowd tell me I was an ass. I think if the crowd had pressured me back then, I'd tell them to go jump in a lake. These guys were wrong, no two ways about it. My concern is tha…

There are many places in our society where kids can do stupid and immature things but I don't think the adults in our engineering profession need to support or sponsor them. I respect Heroku etc for pulling their sponsorship dollars. I'm a huge fan of supporting adult standards of behavior to participate in adult society and I have no patience for sexism in our field.

Re: How to Apologize

#63

Post by mikeash » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 1:35 PM UTC

jeswin wrote: post #9

"Women: Need another beer? Let one of our friendly (female) event staff get that for you." I suppose it varies with culture, but I can't imagine any of the women I know getting upset about that line. So a genuine question, are we getting to a point where you need to think so much before actually saying anything? Personally, even if I were the butt of a mildly racist joke I would probably enjoy the joke than be offend…

I think this line really needs to be preserved in its context. "Women" was listed as a perk. To me, it reads as this close to a wink and a nod that they will procure prostitutes for attendees.

Re: How to Apologize

#64

Post by mikeash » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 1:39 PM UTC

cheez wrote: post #53

Jem wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a woman, and a woman in tech at that, I'm not /upset/ by it, but it does bother me. It bothers me that the organisers assume the attendees will all be straight males and therefore interested in the fact that the servers are women. It bothers me that it plays on the antiquated notion that "women are there to serve". It bothers me that women are being treated as a 'perk', full stop.

But for men, the ultimate perk is a good woman. Is there something wrong with wanting women around? I've seen actual sexism in the workplace but I don't think wanting women around a sausage fest is sexist. It's being male.

There's nothing wrong with it, certainly. However, the correct way to have women around at your conference is to make your conference interesting to women in the field, not hire them to serve beer.

From the perspective of wanting women around, this "perk" basically says that they've given up on getting women in the field to want to come to their conference, and the only way to get them there is to hire them. It's pretty lame.

Re: How to Apologize

#65

Post by hythloday » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 1:39 PM UTC

hullibu wrote: post #34

kaens wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of his point, I think, is that holding an opinion does not harm anyone. Would it be an offensive opinion? Yes. Are you right that there are a bunch of people who would be very angry about it? Yes. And that those people would likely never forgive someone who thought slavery should be brought back? Yes. There's also nothing to forgive the person with the offensive opinion for, other than offending someone. I don't…

I believe in freedom of opinion and speech, but I also believe in freedom of sense. Believing that slavery is good is not only a generally offensive position, but it is an opinion that implies poor morals. Therefore not only in general company is expressing such an opinion a poor choice if one wishes to be socially accepted, but having the opinion itself is an abomination. Being easily offended is not a good thing. A…

Here are some other things that have been considered abominations at one point or another by a dominant culture: homosexual sex; Jews marrying Germans; property right and suffrage for women; atheism (or virtually every religion, in fact).

I am pretty sure that people who held the view that those things were abominable were not Dr. Evil caricatures, but honest people who sincerely believed that these things were utterly wrong and no-one should speak in support of them. I don't say this to illustrate that I think slavery is the moral equivalent of atheism, but that I don't believe that I am smart enough to forgo all my cultural baggage and assert that I have a privileged insight into what is "truly" abominable and what was just bad stuff other people believe.

Even if you do choose to assert that, I think that slavery is an interesting choice because there are arguments that can be made for it. Athenian democracy was essentially built on the backs of disenfranchised slaves; the lack of technological sophistication of Ancient Greece wouldn't have permitted enough free time to nurture a rule by the people without it. Is the world better off for Athenian democracy, slavery and all? I don't think you can answer that with a pat yes or no, but that's the whole point, it's a complex question, not a "slavery is bad, fire everyone who thinks otherwise" question.

Libertarians would question whether the state ought to have the power to ban certain kinds of life-long contract between consenting adults. If you want to stretch the definition of slavery, the standard of living in the West is only supportable by labourers working in other parts of the world under authoritarian systems they don't have political power to change. Is that bad? Sure! Is it a very similar situation to the Industrial Revolution of the 18th/19th centuries, which is essentially the underpinning for every single employment right we have? Yes, it is. Are we then doing good by supporting slavery? I don't know, but again, I don't think these questions should be shut down without discussion.

I don't mean here to speak directly in support of some of the very hateful opinions that you can see expressed every day--I think most of them are vile and I wish their holders didn't do so (and I pity them for the emotional turmoil that must have engendered them and that they engender). But the solution is never to ban or restrict speech, legally or socially, even when a majority agrees that it's desirable to do so, because we are not smarter than everyone else who will ever live.

Re: How to Apologize

#66

Post by DanielBMarkham » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 1:39 PM UTC

carlcoryell wrote: post #62

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't and won't defend these guys, but I remember my teenage years, and I remember being pretty shallow when it came to women. Looking around, I suspect many other males were the same way. I got over this by slowly growing up, not by having a crowd tell me I was an ass. I think if the crowd had pressured me back then, I'd tell them to go jump in a lake. These guys were wrong, no two ways about it. My concern is tha…

There are many places in our society where kids can do stupid and immature things but I don't think the adults in our engineering profession need to support or sponsor them. I respect Heroku etc for pulling their sponsorship dollars. I'm a huge fan of supporting adult standards of behavior to participate in adult society and I have no patience for sexism in our field.

Perhaps I should have been clearer. You are correct. We can and should encourage adult behavior. Heroku and the rest did the right thing -- from an adult, socially-responsible position. There is nothing new about this, it's the way professional groups have conducted themselves since forever.

From a longer-term view, this incident will still be around 50 years from now when these guys are grandfathers. This is completely new and has never existed before in the history of humanity.

I don't think it's an either-or situation. The immediate response could be exactly correct and the long-term impact could be entirely out-of-whack.

Re: How to Apologize

#67

Post by nirvdrum » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 1:43 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #58

kyberias wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, that opinion is wrong. You should stop having it, and if you express it at work you will and should be fired. I think this opinion is wrong. If one expresses his opinion about slavery, he should not be fired. Now that you had this wrong opinion about opinions, should you be fired? From work? From Hacker News? Anywhere?

While I generally subscribe to the Utopian ideal that good ideas should be able to triumph over bad ideas by virtue alone, there are probably both times where it is inappropriate and appropriate for someones opinions and beliefs to be relevant to their employment. Scenario A, normal job, no customer interaction, non-manager, but an irrepressibly talkative fellow. Likes to talk to his co-workers about how awesome slav…

A more relevant and recent example is whether you support software patents. Those opposed to them rail against those in favor of them pretty hard. Some are now making hiring decisions based upon that. Should I not be allowed to express my views on software patents simply because you don't agree with them? You'd like to paint it as a black & white issue, but I don't see it that way.

Sorry for the liberal use of pronouns there. But there's an extremely worrying trend to me whereby it's no longer okay to disagree or have an open discussion about certain topics that the HN mass has decided their stance on. Most of the time I, and many others, just bow out and let everyone here virtually pat themselves on the back as each professes the moral high road they've taken. It defeats the point of having an open forum or discussion on an article. It's our equivalent of political rhetoric.

Re: How to Apologize

#68

Post by kaens » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 1:50 PM UTC

cheez wrote: post #53

Jem wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a woman, and a woman in tech at that, I'm not /upset/ by it, but it does bother me. It bothers me that the organisers assume the attendees will all be straight males and therefore interested in the fact that the servers are women. It bothers me that it plays on the antiquated notion that "women are there to serve". It bothers me that women are being treated as a 'perk', full stop.

But for men, the ultimate perk is a good woman. Is there something wrong with wanting women around? I've seen actual sexism in the workplace but I don't think wanting women around a sausage fest is sexist. It's being male.

But for men, the ultimate perk is a good woman.

I'm a man, a mostly hetero-normative one, who disagrees.

The idea that there is something undesirable about a situation that gets it called a sausage fest is not about being male per se, it's part of a very large set of assumptions about gender and sexuality that are fairly pervasive and ingrained and present enough that they are part of identity for a lot of people.

The idea that the term sausage fest, and the idea that it implies -- that there too many penises in the room and not enough vaginas, and that this is making the penises sad, in the context of a hackathon is sexist. It has a sexist nature. It makes crass and sweeping assumptions about a group of people who are passionate about a topic on the basis of their genitalia, when there are plenty of people with other sets of it that share a passion for the topic, and no ones genitalia is relevant whatsoever to the purpose of the event.

Re: How to Apologize

#69

Post by brown9-2 » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 1:53 PM UTC

cheez wrote: post #53

Jem wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a woman, and a woman in tech at that, I'm not /upset/ by it, but it does bother me. It bothers me that the organisers assume the attendees will all be straight males and therefore interested in the fact that the servers are women. It bothers me that it plays on the antiquated notion that "women are there to serve". It bothers me that women are being treated as a 'perk', full stop.

But for men, the ultimate perk is a good woman. Is there something wrong with wanting women around? I've seen actual sexism in the workplace but I don't think wanting women around a sausage fest is sexist. It's being male.

Assuming that all of your attendees will be men, and that all of your attendees will find the presence of friendly women a perk, seems sexist.

Re: How to Apologize

#70

Post by hcayless » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 1:54 PM UTC

meterplech wrote: post #31

The first thing I thought when reading this article is that it's a shame the author chose this topic as his way of framing the post. If you remove the focus completely from the potentially flame-war issue this is based on there is some great advice in this article. Specifically: "When I worked at Lulu, Bob Young used to say that whenever you screw up, it's actually a tremendous opportunity to win a customer's loyalty…

I framed the post around Sqoot's apology because that was what gave me the idea. I didn't intend to slap them around any more than they have been. It's just an example of what I think was meant to be a genuine apology that fell totally flat.

But yes, my central point is that when someone (or the whole Internet) is pissed off at you, you have their attention and a chance to turn things around, if you have the right goals in mind. Nurturing your relationship with your customer(s) or audience is likely more important than saving face or winning an argument.