I knew exactly how she felt • Hacker News Board

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#271

Post by roguecoder » Sun, Apr 28, 2013, 1:51 AM UTC

irremediable wrote: post #193

vacri wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feminist discourse is usually 1 dimensional. No, it's not. It really, really isn't. You only notice the stuff that mentions female-victim/male-perp because you don't really care enough about the issue to notice anything further. There is heaps of feminist discourse on women judging women and limiting their options by doing so, the topic of this article. And there are plenty of complex narratives rather than black and…

A very good comment that succinctly describes why so many of us unfairly dismiss feminism.

Because you don't bother engaging with anything other than strawmen?

Any time you think something is 1-dimensional, chances are good you are only seeing a few small pieces of the world. Often those pieces are the ones that people in the mainstream find easiest to mock. Ignorance isn't a problem, but making assumptions based on ignorance is.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#272

Post by spiffytech » Sun, Apr 28, 2013, 3:09 AM UTC

chris_mahan wrote: post #174

overgryphon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's laziness. Instead of recognizing that everyone got where they are now by a different path where they learned different things and appreciating the diversity of knowledge that creates, it's so much easier to say, you should have known that.

It's laziness, and it's also lack of empathy.

It's not really either of these things. The curse of expertise in a field is you live and breathe stuff so deeply for so long that you forget what it's like to not be an expert in your field. You forget what non-experts, or bystanders, don't know, because it's hard to remember a time when you didn't know these things.

Computer people are notorious for having trouble explaining technical issues to computer-illiterates for this exact reason. It's not that their unempathetic - they are trying to explain so that the conversant understands, after all - but rather, they've been experts for so long, they forget which technical terms the conversant should or shouldn't know, or what does and doesn't need to be turned into an analogy. Overcoming this is a difficult skill.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#273

Post by spiffytech » Sun, Apr 28, 2013, 3:14 AM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #269

chris_mahan wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I write software automation for the team at a very large bank that processes repurchase requests for mortgage loans issued prior to 2008, aka toxic assets. Our work allows for clarity and resolution of the aftermath of the mortgage crisis. This has a direct impact in the ability of lenders to establish more accurate risk models and re-enter the mortgage lending business. This allows more funds to be available to mort…

"allowing more people to refinance and purchase homes" is a big part of what got us into this mess.

That's an oversimplistic evaluation of the situation. We didn't get into the financial crisis simply because people bought homes, we got into it because banks found clever ways to issue mortgages to unqualified borrowers and pass the risk off on someone else.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#274

Post by eightpersimmons » Sun, Apr 28, 2013, 5:28 AM UTC

ucee054 wrote: post #244

eightpersimmons wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly not sure what seems ridiculous to you. In these instances, the female bullies are acting out misogynistic discourses. Can you clarify what your sticking point is?

No, they are not "acting out misogynistic discourses", they are being horrible people. And let's be clear that it is no fault at all of men. By the way, "sexual policing" comes from sexual competition and evolutionary psychology, which comes from thinking with your ovaries instead of your brain. In much the same way idiot men's one-upmanship comes from thinking with the testicles.

The fact that people act out larger, structural systems of misogyny doesn't exonerate them. A person still has agency, and to say that they are acting out something that is part of a larger discourse doesn't mean that they are helpless puppets. Another thing to realize when talking about misogyny and structural injustice is that it isn't blaming any given individual - that's what makes it structural. It isn't a cabal of evil men with a maniacal plan forcing women down or a statement that all men are bad and oppressive, it's a deeply rooted system of oppression that lots of people propagate, knowingly or not, through stereotypes, legal injustice, inactivity, social policing, et cetera.

And I think you are too quick to write off people's actions as evolutionarily programmed - it's a somewhat ironic response, given your first complaint. Whether or not there is a biological instinct to compete sexually, the expression of that instinct is a product of social norms. Arguments for evolutionary psychology have a troublesome and pretty untenable tendency to ascribe a complex, culturally-specific, and socially enforced behavior to some magical mystery determinism gene. It's kind of a pet peeve of mine.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#275

Post by enneff » Sun, Apr 28, 2013, 6:34 AM UTC

ChiperSoft wrote: post #264

pflats wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good insight, and Star Wars is a good parallel. Not knowing a Hermes bag is probably akin to not knowing who George Lucas is. You're aware there are big name designer handbags out there, but never cared about the details. They're entry level bits of geekery, just in different fields.

George Lucas is a household name, you would have to be pretty cut off from pop culture to not know who he is. I don't think that's quite an equal comparison to a brand of personal accessories.

Hermes is also a household name, believe it or not.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#276

Post by philwelch » Sun, Apr 28, 2013, 6:57 AM UTC

eightpersimmons wrote: post #274

ucee054 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they are not "acting out misogynistic discourses", they are being horrible people. And let's be clear that it is no fault at all of men. By the way, "sexual policing" comes from sexual competition and evolutionary psychology, which comes from thinking with your ovaries instead of your brain. In much the same way idiot men's one-upmanship comes from thinking with the testicles.

The fact that people act out larger, structural systems of misogyny doesn't exonerate them. A person still has agency, and to say that they are acting out something that is part of a larger discourse doesn't mean that they are helpless puppets. Another thing to realize when talking about misogyny and structural injustice is that it isn't blaming any given individual - that's what makes it structural. It isn't a cabal…

Does it always bother you when people give uselessly reductive, empirically unsubstantiated pat explanations for incredibly complicated social behaviors, or only when they conflict with your own?

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#277

Post by VLM » Sun, Apr 28, 2013, 1:51 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #3

She shouldn't feel bad. I've never seen more than a few minutes of Star Wars or Star Trek. Never seen Dr. Who or any of the Monty Python stuff. I've never seen a single Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movie (or read the books). But I keep telling myself that one day I'll binge through them all online.

"one day I'll binge through them all"

I watched all the star trek series when they were new, on live TV. A couple years ago I did the torrent + binge thing you're describing and the experience IS dramatically different.

Even merely watching commercial free downloads dramatically changes the apparent pacing of the story, if the original intention was to have a dramatic pause while you think for awhile. You're supposed to think for an hour of realtime not just 45 minutes. Sometimes I wonder if there are any "distros" of TV shows out there on torrent sites with "intermission" screens instead of simply editing out commercials. It would be a weird, possibly interesting experience.

On a longer scale the very best episodes probably need a couple days to consider, digest, contemplate. Something like "space hippies" is probably best forgotten as quickly as possible, but "Doomsday Machine" (and several others) resulted in a bit of thinking after viewing the episode. Its not the finest of literature, but if you're going to invest the time, you owe it to yourself to get the most you can out of the substantial time expenditure.

If you binge and hit "spocks brain" or some other awful episode during a binge you might be completely derailed and stop, but if its "the thing you go every thursday at 7pm or saturday at 4pm or whatever" then you won't be permanently derailed. Don't let "space hippies" during a binge prevent you from seeing "city on the edge of forever".

On the other hand there is a sort of blurry trippy coolness rush about staying awake for 24 hours watching the entire cardassian war story arc on DS9 or something like that. Everything seems weird and cool and interesting when you're sleep deprived, even if its probably not what the director intended. This is pretty good evidence that coding at 3am is probably results in poor taste results, unless you woke up at 5pm or something.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#278

Post by krapp » Sun, Apr 28, 2013, 2:08 PM UTC

ahoyhere wrote: post #253

ucee054 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Star Wars is not really, really stupid - that end of the spectrum belongs to James Bond.

One word: Ewoks. Not defending Bond movies. I agree, they're pretty damn stupid. (Although at least the earlier ones were done with a sense of fun. I like stupid fun.) But... ewoks.

I've been a fan of Star Wars since practically the beginning but... I can't defend the Ewoks. That was just dumb.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#279

Post by krapp » Sun, Apr 28, 2013, 2:11 PM UTC

ahoyhere wrote: post #201

petercooper wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not seen Star Wars . Well, I tried to but fell asleep 10 minutes in. Oddly, I'm not feeling like an odd one out here, even so :-)

Star Wars is really, really stupid. Also boring. People have an obsession with it because it hit them at the age when they were too young to realize how it's about as intellectually challenging as My Little Ponies in Space. They saw LASERS! and SPACE SHIPS! and EVIL PEOPLE! as 9-year-olds and it embedded in their minds as "cooler than cool." The same way that some adults have a huge nostalgia-on for He-Man or Gem and…

Not really, really stupid.

Not quite as brilliant as the hype suggests after all this time, sure, but at the time all that stuff about the force and, yes, LASERS! and SPACE SHIPS! was pretty spectacular in its own right. But most of what keeps Star Wars going, I think (apart from, obviously, merchandising merchandising merchandising) is that thin vapor of pop-philosophy and Ralph McQuarrie's visual legacy. It looked like nothing anyone had ever seen.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#280

Post by eyko » Sun, Apr 28, 2013, 2:17 PM UTC

memset wrote: post #25

I will offer an experience which is the inverse of this! I am a male software engineer who works in fashion (and before this I worked in wine.) I knew nothing about wine when I started, and my fashion sense is prototypically, well, male-software-centric. People in the wine industry are palpably aware that people view it as "hoity-toity". Professionals I've worked with are usually very gracious in explaining what it m…

Okay, but I've met people who don't know anything that I don't apart from private gossip (and I'm not what you would call very intelligent) so I guess part of what she was trying to say is that people sometimes feel that they can't share anything with anyone around them because they're just not interested in anything meaningful or interesting. (all of that sounded pretentious and wrong)