I cannot express how much I admire this post. This is how I think women should address gender equality: not by antagonizing men, but through sound and assertive work like this.
define: backhanded compliment
Hacking my Vagina
51–60 of 273 posts
Re: Hacking my Vagina
#52I'm amused this is the top story.
And, being one hour old, having a much higher score as the second highest which is five hours old. And having the highest score of the entire front page by quite a wide margin.
Re: Hacking my Vagina
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sympathize with that point, but there's more to it than "what about teh menz?" The question is this: is this doing well on HN because HN is full of progressive-minded feminists upvoting a neat DIY project on its merits, or is it doing well on HN because it serves as fodder for the nerd-girl fantasies of a primarily male readership? I really think this is an important point that often gets missed on male dominated s…
[deleted]
I don't think the majority explicitly thinks like that. Probably, if you asked them why they upvoted, their post hoc justification would be about how not-sexist they were. They'd be proud of it.
But the post hoc justifications people come up with when they actually think about their motivations are very often not the original reasons for their actions, especially when the original reasons are not admirable.
Don't get me wrong here - I don't think that men should feel guilty about their gut reactions to stories like this. If the "female nerds are popular on the internet because they fuel male nerd-girl fantasies" problem is one that needs to be addressed, I have no idea of how to address it. I just think we should recognize that that's what's happening instead of congratulating ourselves on being so modern.
Re: Hacking my Vagina
#54I wonder if an article called "Hacking my Penis" would ever last long the HN front page.
Apparently that word is automatically deleted from titles. Coincidentally, I had just tried submitting an unrelated article about Miiverse drawing detection and had to replace it with "P*nis". http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4826621 [edit] I ended up deleting the submission because it turned out to be an Onion-like site.
This has to be because vaginas look like parens (). It's all part of the Lisp Conspiracy!
Re: Hacking my Vagina
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a sexist remark. It all depend on the content of the article. Did you take time to read the article? It's just great - full of technical details, including the reasoning behind the creation of the hack. Many times I've seen dumb things in the front page - complex pointless hacks (I remember one about locales and printf which advocated a libc recompile while I suggested a perl oneliner). This is a genuinely in…
Good article, link baity title.
Sure may be. On that note, have there been any non-linkbaity titles on HN in, well, as long as one may remember?
Re: Hacking my Vagina
#56I'm so pleased there's no use of the word "dildonics" on that article.
And I'm sad there's no awesome open source version of Rez to go with her device. Probably NSFW for language and underwear photo (http://www.gamegirladvance.com/2002/10/sex-in-games-rezvibra...)
Re: Hacking my Vagina
#57This is a really cool hack, but my problem is that I don't understand the sex part. What's better about waving your hands around to control the motor speed, vs. using a dial? This is not out of prurient interest. I just can't understand the engineering without understanding the use case. Maybe you have to be female to get this?
I would almost say that it would make more sense to have something you touch to create the changes in speed or intensity or whatever vs. air waving? And I would think it would be possible to actually use a smartphone (with vibration feedback) that you rub,touch whatever which would be better than air.
The feedback is important also. I fly rc helis and once you get used to using the sticks and the channels on a traditional radio using the iphone (say on an ardrone) and tilting to do the same (for me at least) is not as satisfying. It doesn't feel real or challenging.
Re: Hacking my Vagina
#58I cannot express how much I admire this post. This is how I think women should address gender equality: not by antagonizing men, but through sound and assertive work like this.
Men getting antagonistic when their sexist behavior is called out is not the fault of the women calling that behavior out.
Re: Hacking my Vagina
#59For anyone interested in more stuff like this, I run a site about sex and technology and track open source sex projects:
Re: Hacking my Vagina
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
[deleted]
I don't think the majority explicitly thinks like that. Probably, if you asked them why they upvoted, their post hoc justification would be about how not-sexist they were. They'd be proud of it. But the post hoc justifications people come up with when they actually think about their motivations are very often not the original reasons for their actions, especially when the original reasons are not admirable. Don't get…
My deleted comment was "I don't think the majority thinks like that" , which i deleted because i don't have data to back it up.
But after reading your reply, what the hell dude/gal? Can't it be that people upvoted the article because sexy subject+technology is double win? Can't it be because i am actually jealous i haven't hacked my penis yet? And i'm not even a Feminist. Now your theory about guilt and nerdgirl fantasies... i think you 're really reaching there