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Lynn Conway has died

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Re: Lynn Conway has died

#151

Post by skeeter2020 »

hyperliner wrote: post #67
KennyBlanken wrote: post #35

> Although she had hoped to be allowed to transition on the job, IBM fired Conway in 1968 after she revealed her intention to transition.[19] IBM apologized for this in 2020. Given that in 2012 there was an entire IEEE magazine issue dedicated to her career and contributions to the field which really brought awareness of all her contributions...it's disappointing it took IBM so long to apologize, especially given the…

But it eventually happened, which is a good thing. Society does not always change fast enough.

agreed. It did happen, but not fast enough, and that should be our motivation to continual push for change, even when we know it's inevitable

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#153

Post by thedynamicduo »

someperson wrote: post #32
wincy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly considering Lynn Conway’s Wikipedia profile mentions being a transgender activist and not knowing much about either of them, I thought maybe I’d just missed that John Conway had transitioned at some point, and had now died.

It really doesn't help that the Wikipedia page doesn't currently appear to state the former name anywhere, like it often does for other people (like celebrities) who legally change their names at some point in their lives.

[flagged]

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#154

Post by darkwater »

tim333 wrote: post #140
bowsamic wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example of an apolitical topic? EDIT: unfortunately I can’t reply to the comments as I have been banned EDIT 2: I have been banned to reply to the commenter, dang told me EDIT 3: dang has now wiped all the upvotes on this message and given me 2 extra downvotes and suddenly another comment I made mentioning him in a totally different thread has been mass downvoted

Providing memory safety in computer languages?

You are making governments secret agencies work harder. So, not apolitical.

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#156

Post by demosthanos »

IntelMiner wrote: post #102
polairscience wrote: post #97

For those of you who are inclined to say "HackerNews doesn't deal with politics", I hope that Lynn's story reminds you that any work you do is intertwined with politics. While I appreciate that it's a difficult line to walk, to have productive and relevant political discussion in a forum like this, politics and social acceptance are a part of every aspect of our lives. Brilliant, kind, impactful people are kept from…

Anybody who conflates human rights as "politics" are someone I simply cannot respect A persons right to exist is not political (This isn't a dig at OP but it's worth restating)

It's a lot more complicated than that. What constitutes a human right is deeply tied up in questions of ethics that are not settled and have no universal acceptance even within a single culture. Any given person will have deep feelings about the human rights that their ethical framework demands, but those deep feelings will often contradict the deeply held feelings of other people.

This means that which ethical framework we as a society use to decide what counts as a human right is an inherently political question: it's a decision that we try to make as a society in as nonviolent a manner as possible.

And before we get too far off the deep end, I want to note that both sides of the aisle firmly believe that the other side ignores fundamental human rights that their side respects. This is what happens when good people operate with completely opposite ethical frameworks, and we won't get anywhere by just shouting that our framework is the only valid one.

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#158

Post by polairscience »

Bostonian wrote: post #150
IntelMiner wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody who conflates human rights as "politics" are someone I simply cannot respect A persons right to exist is not political (This isn't a dig at OP but it's worth restating)

Thirty years almost everyone believed that a person's sex is determined at conception and is immutable, and most people on earth probably still believe that today.

You're using the word sex. There is a known, massively complex, relationship between sex and gender but it's not 1:1. For anyone. Or, if you think that's not true, then please describe to me how they're identical. In a group of men, in any place in the world, you'll find wildly varying accounts of what the male gender "is" all the way down to how their bodies should look.

And, gender aside, the most important thing to consider is the existence of intersex people, the diaspora of their bodies, and to consider how you think we should talk about them. Sex is, even outside gender, in fact not immutable. It's biology. These people are also historically denigrated.

Please imagine how ~150 years ago we collectively thought (and some people still think) that a person's race determined their intelligence. Historically "fundamental truths" usually end up with people being thought of as subhuman. The "fundamental truth" of sex, as it's presented by those who consider trans folks not people, is the same sort of truth. Biological sex is a spectrum, demonstrably. Gender is also demonstrably a spectrum. I don't care what people believe sex is or isn't. I care that we treat everyone, no matter how "weird" with respect.

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#159

Post by umvi »

IntelMiner wrote: post #102
polairscience wrote: post #97

For those of you who are inclined to say "HackerNews doesn't deal with politics", I hope that Lynn's story reminds you that any work you do is intertwined with politics. While I appreciate that it's a difficult line to walk, to have productive and relevant political discussion in a forum like this, politics and social acceptance are a part of every aspect of our lives. Brilliant, kind, impactful people are kept from…

Anybody who conflates human rights as "politics" are someone I simply cannot respect A persons right to exist is not political (This isn't a dig at OP but it's worth restating)

> A persons right to exist is not political

I don't think anyone disagrees with that, I think the disagreement comes from the way that activists insist that the best solution for treating [gender dysphoria, etc] is to "socially and heavy handedly force everyone to complete the illusion by treating transgender individuals as indistinguishable from their biological counterparts in every way". That's not the only solution for treating [gender dysphoria, etc], just the current (and perhaps uniquely) American one, and it comes with a variety of problems the obvious of which stem from significant biological factors that make the illusion impossible to complete (sports, etc).

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