Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

geekchick77.dreamwidth.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 392 posts

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#371

Post by bmelton »

ugh wrote: post #343
bmelton wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the intent to annoy is an impolite notion. Aside from handling it with management instead of escalating the prank war, I don't see a lot of terribly polite ways above and beyond what she'd already done. As for why I think it was intended to annoy, I suppose from my perspective at least, that's the obvious conclusion. A bot annoyed her, so she wrote her own. From the text in the blog post, she seems to take plea…

Oh, wow. You are the false equivalency master. The problem here is not that the bot is annoying, the problem is that the bot is sexist. Responding to sexist remarks with something that signifies that those remarks are sexist is not the same as making sexist remarks. Whether or not those two bots are annoying is a different issue that is now used as an excuse to rationalize hating on the second bot. How can you be so…

It's not that I'm blind to that, it's that I don't consider it a good enough excuse to go around pestering one's co-workers.

The other thing is that there are more than two parties in this situation. There is the guy who put the TWSS bot in place, and there's this person, who put the anti-TWSS bot in place.

Let's assume you're the third person (or fourth, fifth, whatever). You didn't put any bots in place. You're just going to work every day trying to turn your startup into a profit center. You're head's down, nose to the grindstone, and you would like to have used the IRC channel as an effective means of communicating with your co-workers so that you can be efficient.

Sure, you maybe considered the TWSS bot a distraction. Now, you've got an IRC channel that's half as useful as it was.

You didn't do anything wrong, but now you're suffering the effects of pranks from both parties.

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#372

Post by Lockyy »

batista wrote: post #349
pndmnm wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batista is not being downvoted because they're expressing a differing opinion. They're being downvoted because they're not taking the time to fully consider the issues and engage in reasonable debate. As an example, from their first post, they suggest that it's not legitimate to worry about this sort of problem because larger problems exist. This form of argument is not only blindly hypocritical (that is, if the argu…

> As an example, from their first post, they suggest that it's not legitimate to worry about this sort of problem because larger problems exist. This form of argument is not only blindly hypocritical (that is, if the arguer believed it, they would not be engaging in the subdebate but rather be working to resolve the larger problem) Which I am. I have a somewhat popular blog in my language on the "larger problems", an…

Just to address a single issue in your post here.

Your "priorities" excuse is exactly the same as other peoples "first world problems" excuse. Saying nobody can ever have a problem because someone somewhere is dying of something. It's just ridiculous to assume that everyone should stop caring about everything because there is a much bigger problem somewhere. If that was the case nothing would ever get done/changed.

Little things matter to people. You can't just ignore them. Even if you think someone is overreacting when they come complaining to you. If you're their boss and it's about a workplace issue then it's your responsibility to make things better for everyone. Otherwise you're just going to be left with unproductive, resentful workers. And that ignores the possibility that you might listen and understand why they are concerned. (Which you know, you should do...)

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#373

Post by jasonlotito »

batista wrote: post #369
batista wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Read what he's writing. It's downright rude. Can you point to the rude parts? Or is that too much to ask? > Learn to discuss matters like an adult, and you won't have this issue. Actually most of the discussion on the issue is like that of touchy 20 year olds. Adults dont "down-vote" on disagreement.

>> Can you point to the rude parts? Or is that too much to ask? > Any of his comments in this thread are rude. Practically each on seethed with immaturity and rudeness for the other people in the thread. Any particular part? Yeah, the parts where he was commenting . So, you accuse the other guy of being rude, but when asked to give a specific example, you resort to platitudes and generalities. Thanks for the mature c…

> So, you accuse the other guy of being rude

You

> but when asked to give a specific example, you resort to platitudes and generalities.

You first reply was littered with immaturity and insults. Everyone after that is combative, abrasive, and immature.

Considering your contribution up to this point, I've put in far too much effort already.

> Thanks for the mature contribution.

You're welcome. At the very least, you can recognize maturity in others, and that's a starting point. =)

Edit: I just realized your complaining about people complaining about sexism when there are "more important" things like homelessness. The irony is quite funny.

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#374

Post by temphn »

bct wrote: post #253
batista wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Yes, quick quick, down-vote the heretic -- we haven't progressed much from Salem, have we?) >Important things like women making less money than men, being more subjected to media objectification, being the target of laws that want to deny them rights because we still have a problem accepting that women are exactly equal to us? Funny how you seem to have the missed the part where I SPECIFICALLY write: " It's not like…

> down-vote the heretic > "forbidden thought" > I don't care about "thought crimes". Bad news: you're not the brave thinker that you seem to think you are (in fact your "forbidden thought" is probably more common than the alternative that we're presenting!). People aren't disagreeing with you because they think it's morally wrong to think the way you do, they disagree because they think you're wrong .

No, you are disagreeing solely because you have been trained to do so in college. Unlike batista you are not reasoning from first principles (which start with the brute fact of XX and XY), you are instead simply siding with those who have the most power among the elites.

There are a lot more feminist Harvard grads than Harvard grads who explicitly endorse Larry Summers' conclusions. Thus if you want to advance your career you mouth the right platitudes and downvote the heretics. But the thing is that men and women are indeed genetically and behaviorally different, and most cultures over most time periods (including the Chinese culture which is going to supplant the modern West) have acknowledged that rather than trying to futilely fight nature.

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#375

Post by hythloday »

guelo wrote: post #354
agateform wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to tell your girlfriend that joking about domestic violence is very dangerous to you as a male.

It's just a joke. Lighten up.

The irony of this being downvoted is palpable.

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#376

Post by temphn »

hythloday wrote: post #16

"It has been fascinating to watch the ongoing reactions. There have been complaints that we have too many bots in the channel now. There have been complaints about it spamming the channel. There were several “Make them shut up!” responses. These are not reactions I have seen the other bots elicit, certainly not with such intensity. One person even complained about the name being too long, though to his credit he real…

In modern American society there are no intermediates for male and female roles.

Either women are told to act like a man (become programmers, fight like Uma Thurman and Keira Knightley!) or they are told to become a caricature of a female (a pornstar, a hiphop video girl, a superficial Sex and the City-style consumer). Men similarly are told to either act effeminately (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, getting in touch with your emotions) or they are shown brutish caricatures of men (rap stars and UFC fighters).

Ben Horowitz, great as he is in many ways, is the apotheosis of this phenomenon. Punctilious in his text about using the "she" pronoun, he nevertheless quotes rappers like the Geto Boys at the beginning of every essay.

Now the Geto Boys, or Dr Dre, or Snoop Dogg, or Fifty Cent...that's misogyny. But they are allowed to make millions and never ever forced to apologize. Indeed, I will guarantee that many of the women complaining about about the sexism in computer science have listened to hiphop, attended concerts, and danced to it at parties without blinking an eye.

By any measure Snoop Dogg and Jay Z are more misogynistic than a lowly programmer. Yet the powerful endorse them (recall the New York Times' ad campaign with Jay Z, "Mingle with Moguls") while complaining about the far weaker tea that is sexism in IT.

Something is going on here and it's not based upon rational prioritization of targets, going after the loudest and most powerful purveyors of misogyny. It's quite the opposite: going after the weakest.

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#378

Post by MSexton »

temphn wrote: post #376
hythloday wrote: post #16

"It has been fascinating to watch the ongoing reactions. There have been complaints that we have too many bots in the channel now. There have been complaints about it spamming the channel. There were several “Make them shut up!” responses. These are not reactions I have seen the other bots elicit, certainly not with such intensity. One person even complained about the name being too long, though to his credit he real…

In modern American society there are no intermediates for male and female roles. Either women are told to act like a man (become programmers, fight like Uma Thurman and Keira Knightley!) or they are told to become a caricature of a female (a pornstar, a hiphop video girl, a superficial Sex and the City-style consumer). Men similarly are told to either act effeminately (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, getting in touch…

> Something is going on here and it's not based upon rational prioritization of targets, going after the loudest and most powerful purveyors of misogyny. It's quite the opposite: going after the weakest.

It seems rational to me. I don't know Jessamyn Smith, but I personally don't listen to rap, I don't meet rap stars, and none of my friends like rap. I don't hear rap.

Co-workers? An IRC bot on a channel she's logged on to every work day? A rational response would be to target the things that are affecting you, constantly.

On a larger, societal scale, sure, stopping to misogyny in rap would help more. And it contributes to a culture where it's okay to create an TWSS bot. But it wouldn't help that situation in the short term.

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#379

Post by [deleted] »

agateform wrote: post #201
olalonde wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify, I was referring to the technical people working in the porn industry, not the performers per se.

Are you saying that porn only objectify woman? I see the sexual objectification concept often used as a way to demonise natural human sexual attraction. If man and woman ignored physical appearance and resourcefulness we would probably be extinct by now.

[deleted]

Re: Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

#380

Post by olalonde »

agateform wrote: post #201
olalonde wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify, I was referring to the technical people working in the porn industry, not the performers per se.

Are you saying that porn only objectify woman? I see the sexual objectification concept often used as a way to demonise natural human sexual attraction. If man and woman ignored physical appearance and resourcefulness we would probably be extinct by now.

No that's not what I am saying.
Post reply on HN